By Bob Allen
Dr. Fred Loper is stepping down May 31 as executive director of the Baptist Medical Dental Fellowship to become medical director of a local charitable Christian medical clinic in the Oklahoma City area.
Fred Loper
|
Loper, formerly a medical missionary with the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, came as associate executive director in 2002 to the organization that recruits Baptist health-care professionals and local churches for volunteer mission opportunities. He took over as leader after his predecessor, James Williams, former head of the SBC Brotherhood Commission, one of several denominational agencies merged to form NAMB, retired in 2004.
Charles Walker, current president of the Baptist Medical Dental Fellowship’s board of directors, credited Loper with growing the organization’s membership, establishing both national and international partnerships and leading international teams of health-care professionals in projects to Central America; Mexico and India. He also added staff to consult with churches interested in starting free health-care clinics.
“BMDF will certainly miss the leadership Dr. Loper has provided, but we know that Fred will continue to be a part of us just in less formal terms,” Walker said. In his resignation letter, Loper indicated that he wants to spend the final phase of his career treating the urban poor.
The Baptist Medical Dental Fellowship mobile clinic has been in service since November.
|
Recently the organization dedicated a new mobile medical and dental unit purchased with a large charitable grant from the Butterfield Memorial Foundation to be used for treating homeless people in Oklahoma City and the uninsured in rural Oklahoma. It also is part of a diabetic education program formed after meetings with educators who estimated that fewer than 20 percent of Oklahoma’s diabetic patients have training in how to manage their disease.
A search committee formed to find Loper’s replacement is collecting letters of recommendation and resumes by e-mail.