Europe with Trans-European Division communication director Victor Hulbert and reporting on Adventist work in the region. For a list of others stories, follow the links at the end of this story.

Seventh-day Adventist pastor Igor Mitrović once believed that the church’s prophetic calling was to proclaim the Second Coming of Jesus.

But after working on the frontlines of Europe’s refugee crisis for the past year, Mitrović sees a second and equally important prophetic calling: to help the helpless.

The two callings are not unrelated, Mitrović said in an interview at a refugee crisis center that he helps run in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. By reaching out to those who cannot help themselves, Adventists are sharing the gospel with as much power as with an evangelistic series.

“Whenever you find a stranger, someone very helpless, you are called to raise your voice and protect,” Mitrović said, citing Old Testament prophet Amos and his strong denouncements of the exploitation of the helpless in passages such as Amos 2:6-8 and 8:4-7.

Mitrović, who has worked at ADRA’s country director in Serbia for the past five years, also expressed new appreciation for biblical characters who were refugees and said the church’s front-line refugee work was pointing both refugees and non-Adventist partners to the gospel. He shared how an interpreter recently began attending an Adventist church.

ADRA is not alone is assisting refugees in Serbia. Many of the small Balkan country’s 6,000 Adventists sprang into action as refugees poured in last year, collecting food, clothing, and water and then distributing the supplies. Church members also wanted to open up their homes, but the authorities forbade this, saying they needed to keep track of the refugees by housing them at state-designated facilities, said Djordjija Trajkovski, president of the Adventist Church’s South-East European Union, whose territory includes Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, and Montenegro.

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