David Morken was born in 1910 in Minnesota, USA. He was to be a Christian evangelist with a global ministry. His family was of Norwegian descent. In 1914 they moved to California. Growing up his one ambition was to be a doctor, but he came to faith in his high school years and just wanted to serve God and preach the gospel.
He trained at LIFE Bible College in Los Angeles, graduated in 1931 and went into the ministry, marrying Helen Mitchell in 1935, who also trained at LBC. They had a joint ministry in a growing church in Lodi, California when they felt the call to foreign missions.
He and Helen found themselves despatched to Sumatra in 1939, serving the Koeboe people. However after three years the Japanese invaded and the Morkens had to escape in an open boat and eventually, after a 3-month journey, find their way back home.
Back in California, from 1942-45 David was director of the Christian Service Organisation preaching to large numbers of soldiers. He organised a Saturday night ‘Jubilee’ in Los Angeles, which became the largest youth rally in the USA, and became vice-president of Youth for Christ International.
His ministry expanded to other towns and cities in the USA and abroad, and he found himself working globally with other evangelists like Billy Graham. Morken was really more of an evangelist than a missionary.
In 1947 there was an urgent need for evangelists to travel to Europe, India and China and start a work there. Dave and Helen Morken together with YFC colleague Bob Pierce answered the call and began YFC in and around Shanghai. He and his team preached all over South China, with as many as 30,000 attending rallies every Saturday night in Xian. Tens of thousands came to faith. On the strength of this, Bob Pierce went on to found the charity World Vision, a child sponsorship charity, in 1950.
It was in 1949 that Mao Zedong and the Communist takeover in China forced most of the missionaries and other foreigners out of China. YFC held rallies as long as possible and Morken and his family were in Shanghai when it fell to the Communists. They were held for 18 months under house arrest and released in 1950.
The Morkens served in Japan for the next three and a half years until there came a stronger call from Hong Kong; they moved to Hong Kong in 1954 for an evangelistic and conference teaching ministry which took him to Ethiopia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and elsewhere.
In 1956 he spoke at a large Hong Kong Crusade.
In 1959 Morken joined the staff of World Vision as minister-at-large and, still based in Hong Kong, he and Helen continued to work all over Asia, preaching in the Philippines, Macao, Japan and India.
In Hong Kong David Morken managed World Vision’s program, which was not great but the potential was great with huge numbers of refugees coming over the border, estimated at 6-7000 per month in 1959, and living in vast shanty towns in the New Territories. The Hong Kong government responded magnificently with more than 75 H Blocks being built, and as nearly 40% of the inhabitants were children under the age of 14, World Vision was funding some of the ad hoc work that was using the roofs of these blocks as schools.
When his friend Bob Pierce (founder of World Vision) visited Hong Kong in 1959 on a world tour of projects to sponsor, Morken, together with Dr Peter Jenkins of Emmanuel Church and others, showed him the rooftop schools, Ethel Groce’s work among the Boat People, the Haven of Hope work at Junk Bay, and Mildred Dibden’s Shatin Babies’ Home, where the Morkens served as Advisory Friends, as well as giving support in other ways.
In 1960 the Morkens returned to California for a year but then returned to Hong Kong to continue ministering.
In 1962 Morken hit a health problem and had to cancel all engagements for two years. Over the years he had experienced enormous testing with physical illnesses - amoebic abscesses on the liver, exhaustion from sprue, and a brain tumour, all of which required specialist treatment and long periods of rest. His doctors had advised him not to return to tropical climes, but he had done so anyway and bounced back with vigour.
The Morkens returned to the States from Hong Kong in 1963 and over the next twenty years continued to minister together globally in India, Singapore, Burma, Nepal, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Brazil, Afghanistan, Japan, Manila, Tehran and Israel.
In 1978 Helen was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery. During this time they were ministering at Calvary Temple in Golden, Colorado.
When Helen died in 1983, David joined Billy Graham on crusades in Sacramento and Oklahoma City and continued his ministry at the Calvary Temple.
In 1985, at 75 years of age, he married Wilma Taylor, a widow whose family he had known from his early years in Lodi, California. The following year they ministered together with Youth With a Mission on a 3-month mission in Amsterdam.
After a life of astonishing vigour and activity David Morken, of Lodi, California, died in 2003 of natural causes, aged 92. His and Helen’s 6 children survived him, together with many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Sources:
Let My Heart Be Broken – Richard Gehman
Shatin Babies' Home Newsletter 1960
Youth For Christ International history