If you’re looking for the perfect way to teach your kids the story of Jesus’ birth, Pastor Alexander Skibelsky may just have you covered! A few years ago, Pastor Alex began laying the plans for a biblically based, fun-to-read way to introduce children to the stories of Jesus’ life. “I started working on the project around 2021 when I still lived in Ukraine,” shared Pastor Alex. “But at the beginning of 2022 war had started and it was a very unstable, uncertain time. We left the country and lived in the States in the Chicago area at first before I was hired here by the Oregon Conference. It was a very stressful time, and when you’re overwhelmed like that and living in survival mode you tend to lose your creativity. But this year I set myself a deadline to finish the project before the General Conference session, and I officially finished the project in June of 2025!”

Pastor Alex has worked as a professional illustrator for many years, with a special focus on children’s materials. Besides his work in pastoral ministry, he has worked with a number of publishing houses illustrating books, articles, and other projects as a subcontractor, even spending a few years illustrating a magazine for Orthodox Jewish children. “With time I really started to have the desire to combine my pastoral and illustration backgrounds,” said Pastor Alex. “When I was illustrating for the magazine the lead illustrator really invested in me and taught me all about drawing software and techniques. When I felt like my skills were sufficient and started feeling that desire to start something of my own, I started to pray about it. It was a new area and would take some courage to step into it, but little by little I was drawn to creating a comic that reflected our Adventist understanding of the Christmas story for children.”

Pastor Alex shared that media projects are an incredible way to reach more people than you might be able to otherwise – a lesson he learned both as an illustrator and as a former host of a Ukrainian television show. “Publishing material makes it easy to translate and share across languages and cultures. It really helps expand a circle of influence,” he said. He also shared that illustration fills a growing need with today’s children and young people, who are changing how they learn. “A lot of kids today have a challenging time reading big chunks of text – they’re much more visual learners. My hope is that things like this can ease their access to biblical texts. While I had to use a little bit of imagination for this, the vast majority of the comic is directly from the Bible, including the text. I hope kids will find themselves engaging more with the scriptural narrative of Christ and His birth.”

You can learn more about Pastor Alex’s “The Birth of Jesus” project by visiting www.mybiblecomics.com!

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