So where do I stand in regards to 'Evangelism'. Well to be honest I am a a tad confused, so my position is loaded with tons of ambiguity. I do believe that Jesus Christ is our hope, but I confess it is currently loaded with loads of sub clauses. But here is some of my museings.
1. Is evangelism as we know it in the end all about communicating 'knowledge'? I think it should be about Christ shining through us.
2. Is our concept of evangelism really a colonial attitude? Eg, We Know the right way and we are going to go to other people (and other cultures) and tell them about the right way because they don't know it. They cannot teach us anything because we have the truth and they don't. We love them so we want to tell them, but that love is a condescending love. This breeds arrogance, inflexibility and in the end intolerance. This 'evangelical' evangelism has the same spirit of the crusades which we feel such horror about today.
3. Is the Bible really that cut and dried about the 'good news'? I think myself that Jesus is a pretty big key in the Good news, but I have always struggled to see all the i's dotted and the t's crossed beyond Jesus in the Bible. I used to sincerely ask this even when I was a Minister. I have read the Bible again and again through my life and I have always struggled to pin the Good News down exactly. The only way I could discover it was by reading other books about things like the Roman Road etc so I could understand. Yet I look at the life of Jesus, Paul or the early church living and acting not quite in the way I thought they would if they were holding to this 'Good News' which is meant to be so obvious.
4. In the end experience tells me, that knowledge does not bring freedom in the long run. Yet the reality of being with God cannot be manufactured or sped up. The big guy in the end has things under control, and he will use us in his time.
5. I have come to believe that Gods grace is so massive that any formula to do with Evangelism is totally changed. For people who hold rigidly to the 'In our Out' theory would throw a smidgen of God's grace into that formula. For me at this time, I guess I hold strongly to Gods grace with just a smidgen of the 'In or Out' in to that formula. Tomorrow I might think different, but I am happy at this time to live in ambiguity.
..personally I have found that Christians (including myself) are not that much different to other "nice people" in that we all have our good and bad days. Even my bad days doesn't change the fact that God has acted on behalf of mankind in the person of JC. I don't think that the people around us are interested in us trying to be perfect or putting on a good front, but they want to see us struggling just as they are but being consistent in our desire to make JC Lord of every part of our lives. In the past we have seen holy living as not participating in dancing, gambling etc which has been far too negative. We need instead to think about being distinctive.
Don't have time or answers to engage on every issue you have raised, but regarding knowledge, I think that the Bible often uses the word - and as western people we see it as 'head' knowledge, but in reality for them in was more 'knowing' that 'knowledge' - a set of facts that were known, becuase they had encountered Christ and continue to encounter him daily.
I think that with this in mind, we can talk about a set of facts and a relationship with Jesus at the same time and not be at cross purposes with ourself.
I have just been reading 2 Peter 1 lately and he uses the word knowledge four times in the opening sentences, but further study reveals that it is knowing facts becuase we have a relationship with Christ that he is talking about. Just a thought. Hope it helps.