Is your evangelism 'accessible'?

Having been on holiday in the UK recently, one of the things we did was visit a National Trust site.

This wasn’t an old house, but a Saxon burial site; when excavated, it revealed the grave of a king – along with his rather large boat!

Last year, we’d visited a separate museum where they were building a full-sized replica of that boat using Saxon methods. Not only was it fascinating, but it was accessible for me. Much of this was not about level access, but the fact I was noticed and guided through the crowds to make sure I could see everything. If something was too high to see, it was brought to me.

On going to the actual dig site with its museum, it was a different story.

Advertised as fully wheelchair accessible – it wasn’t. The whole museum was built for standing people.

Thankfully, the tour started with a video on a small theatre screen – an enactment of a mother and daughter preparing the king’s riches for his journey into the afterlife.

In this enactment, the daughter talked about hearing about the “Christ King” from a French merchant. After a to-and-fro between mother and daughter, the video ends with her saying, “I have chosen to follow the Christ King”.

This was picked up in different areas within the museum, with the words “Christ King” being said in various videos I couldn’t see due to them being too high. Sometimes it was in the basic information I could see, if the text was on a wall (rather than fixed flat to the top of a high bench).

It seems this Christ King was being talked about – a lot. So, it appears, people going about their daily lives in Saxon times were hearing about Jesus in the language they would use in their own culture.

It was fascinating!

Maybe because it was such a struggle to access this museum, my brain linked the inaccessibility of the venue with hearing about Jesus, and then not being able to access ways of getting to know more about Him.

For the Saxon people, the language of “the Christ King” meant more than just hearing about Jesus. He was made accessible.

We talk about being culturally aware as though it’s a new thing, but the merchants of 625 AD were already onto it!

If I, as a wheelchair user, was hearing about the Christ King for the first time in that museum, how accessible would my quest to find out more be?

Would it be like the museum itself – accessible at the very basic level – but going no further than just the entrance being accessible? Or would it have been like the separate boat-building museum, where I was seen and welcomed, and the knowledge I wanted was accessible?