A Practical Walk-Through of Sketches From The Life Of Paul
I have been running Bible studies out of sketch courses like this one for probably fifteen years now, mostly in small group settings at churches that don't have a full-time trained teacher on staff. The Sketches From The Life Of Paul curriculum is one of the more common ones you will find floating around Churches of Christ and similar congregations. It was put together by Jack Kettlewell and it walks students through Paul's background, his missionary journeys, and the general themes of his epistles. The format is straightforward: each sketch is a short reading followed by discussion questions. That is about it. It is a correspondence-style Bible study workbook. Each sketch covers a specific passage or theme from Paul's life and ministry. The student reads the material, answers the questions at the bottom, and typically turns it in to a mentor or study leader for feedback. Some people run it as a solo self-study. Others use it as a weekly small group curriculum where the group goes through one sketch together. The flexibility is kind of the whole point. You can move fast or slow depending on the group. The sketches are numbered in order. Sketch 1 usually covers Paul's early life and conversion on the Damascus road. Later sketches move into the missionary journeys, then the prison epistles, and eventually the pastoral epistles. The content assumes you already have a Bible and are comfortable looking up references yourself. It does not spoon-feed everything. That design choice matters because it means beginners sometimes get lost on the first pass, especially on the harder epistles like Romans or Ephesians where the study expects you to do some heavy lifting on your own.
Where to Get It
The PDF versions circulate widely online. I cannot point you at a specific link because they tend to move around, get taken down, and reappear on different sites. A quick search for "Sketches From The Life Of Paul PDF" will surface several hosting pages. There are also printed copies that get sold through certain religious book retailers, though those tend to be more expensive and harder to find in stock. Most people I know just download the PDF and print what they need or read it on a tablet. Printing is fine if you want the traditional experience of writing answers in the margins. Tablets work better if you want to save paper and keep everything searchable. My typical setup is a Wednesday night small group of six to eight people. We do one sketch per week, which means the whole course takes roughly twelve to fourteen weeks depending on how much discussion time each session runs. I hand out the sketch the week before so people can read it on their own time. We meet, go through the discussion questions together, and I make sure nobody leaves without having at least looked up the main Bible passages in the text itself. I do not let people answer from memory alone. That is where the real study happens, in the actual scripture reading. The biggest time sink is the transition between sketches that jump from Acts into the epistles. The study does a decent job linking them but not a perfect one. I usually spend an extra ten minutes at the start of those sessions just making sure people understand the chronological gap between Paul's journeys and when he wrote a particular letter. Without that context, Romans and Philippians can feel like they came from nowhere.
Common Problems and Workarounds
I ran into a specific issue last year that took me a while to sort out. Several of my students were struggling with Sketch 8, which deals heavily with the Galatian controversy and the Jerusalem council in Acts 15. The discussion questions assumed a level of familiarity with first-century Jewish-Gentile relations that half the group simply did not have. Two people nearly dropped out because they felt behind. The workaround was straightforward but not obvious if you are just winging it: I pulled together a one-page timeline handout that mapped out the key events from Paul's conversion through the council, plus a short glossary of terms like "circumcision party," " Judaizers," and "apostolic decree." I spent maybe twenty minutes putting that together. It prevented three people from dropping out of the study that week. Another thing worth noting is that the sketch questions are open-ended discussion prompts, not multiple choice. That means quiet people in your group will not get carried along by someone else's answers. You have to actively draw them out. I learned this the hard way during my first time running the course. I assumed the questions would naturally generate conversation. They did not. I had to start asking follow-up questions directly to individuals, which felt awkward at first but made the whole dynamic shift.
Get the Full Details
What Beginners Miss
Most people treat the sketch readings as something to skim through quickly so they can get to the questions. That defeats the purpose. The reading itself contains the core instruction. If you skip it, you are just going to be guessing at answers that the text already explained. Read the sketch fully before touching the questions. Then read it again if anything is unclear. This approach usually cuts down on the back-and-forth during group sessions because everyone comes in on the same page, literally. Another overlooked detail is that the sketches reference multiple translations of the Bible occasionally. The study leans heavily on the King James or New King James in its quotes, but the discussion questions sometimes make sense better when you look at the same passage in a more modern translation like the NIV or ESV. I keep a side-by-side reference guide open on my laptop during sessions and pull up alternative translations when a particular verse is causing confusion. It saves a lot of time compared to handing out physical study Bibles to everyone.
The Downsides Nobody Talks About
The curriculum has real limitations. It was written decades ago and the language style reflects that. Some of the phrasing feels dated, and a few of the theological assumptions lean heavily toward a particular interpretive tradition within the Churches of Christ. If your group includes people from other denominational backgrounds, you may find yourselves disagreement on points that the sketch presents as settled fact. The study does not signal when something is debatable. It just states it. Also, the coverage is broad but shallow. You will get a solid overview of Paul's life and major themes, but you will not come out of it with deep exegetical training. If someone wants to go deeper into, say, the argument structure of Romans or the Greek grammar of specific passages, this course will not take them there. For that you would need a separate commentary study or a Greek text course. The Sketches From The Life Of Paul is a foundation layer, not a complete education. There is also the issue of access for the visually impaired. The standard PDF layout is not very screen-reader friendly. The text blocks are narrow and the footnote references are embedded in ways that assistive technology struggles with. If you have a participant who relies on a screen reader, plan ahead and look into alternative formatting or have someone read passages aloud during the session. It is a small logistical detail that can become a real barrier if you ignore it.
Bottom Line
If you are looking for a structured but not overly academic way to study Paul's life and letters, this course does the job. It is not polished. It is not comprehensive. It works best when paired with your own Bible reading and a group that is willing to dig into the actual scripture passages rather than just debating opinions. The cost is low, the format is flexible, and the content is generally sound even if some of the assumptions are narrow. Just be aware of the gaps before you commit a group to the full twelve-week journey through it.
