They had already planted yard signs, volunteered at the farmers’ market booth and signed each and every one of the petitions, so now the residents of Peculiar, Mo., took to the field outside their homes to pray.

For years, that golden wheat had been the backdrop of this 6,000-person hamlet, best known as a pit stop on trips from Kansas City to the Ozarks. Now, it was a battleground between a tech giant’s proposed data center and the rural community around it.

“Father God, we are Davids against Goliath,” said Susan Wells, the group’s prayer leader, that October night. “We pray for the Davids among us.”

The situation in Peculiar had not always been so precarious. When executives from Diode Ventures, the company developing the data center for its secret tech company client, last met with those residents, it was on a peaceful July night over wine slushies at the town’s beloved winery.

The 500-acre data center campus, the executives said, would be a boon to the town, bringing in new jobs and over a billion dollars in tax revenue, most of which would go to the school district. All they needed was the land rezoned for industrial use.