What did you make of what journalist – and seeker – Margaret Simons had to say of the time she spent at church?

She says she’s not a Christian, but she’s still searching, and will continue to search.

There were a few barriers as to her accepting the Christian message: she found the traditional services she attended as a child dull and lifeless, but the more lively Pentecostal churches she’s visited recently didn’t stack up for her intellectually.

Are you, like Margaret, a seeker? Looking for God but not too sure of who he is yet? Maybe turned off by some aspects of the church…but not necessarily the message of the Gospel? What are the things that are preventing you from believing? We’d love to know what faith matters look like from your perspective.

Or maybe you were once a ‘seeker’ but you would now say you’ve found faith. What was your journey? Maybe your intellect initially prevented you from believing – how did you change? What were the things that initially prevented you from believing, and how were they resolved?

What do you do when your boyfriend is not on the same page as you spiritually?

That’s Abbie’s dilemma this week. Abbie is a Christian and has been seeing her boyfriend – who’s also a Christian - on a reasonably serious basis, for the last five months.

However she’s realising that they’re not on the same wavelength when it comes to spiritual matters. He’s a relatively new Christian, while Abbie has been a Christian for most of her life, and even works at her church.

Abbie wants her boyfriend to take responsibility for his own faith – and to get excited about the same things that she does. But he sometimes resents having to wake up early to go to church…and it upsets Abbie that they don’t pray about things together very much.

Abbie doesn’t know whether she should break up and give him time to find his own feet spiritually, or stay together and work things out..

DISCUSSION POINTS:
• How important is it to be spiritually ‘in tune’ – so to speak - with your partner?
• Can you grow together spiritually within a relationship, even if you are at different stages in your journey?
• Have you been in a relationship where both of you believed the same things but to different degrees? Can those relationships work? Does it even out eventually so that you are in tune with each other and with God?

Delegates from 190 nations will meet in Bali tomorrow to discuss the way forward for the global community in combating climate change. Prime minister elect Kevin Rudd and four of his senior cabinet ministers will be attending.

Kevin Rudd says he’ll be ratifying Kyoto as soon as possible – with Australia set to be a full member of the Kyoto club by March. He’s committed Australia to an emissions reduction target of 60% by 2050.

Do you think it’s a good idea that Australia is signing the Kyoto protocol?

FOR SIGNING:
It means Australia will now be taken seriously by the global community – for taking formally committing Australia to a legally binding protocol to reduce carbon emissions – and being part of the global solution to climate change.

Business leaders have welcomed Kevin Rudd’s pledge to sign Kyoto. 150 companies, including business heavy weights Macquarie Group, Westpac, National Australia Bank, News Corp, Coca-Cola, GE, Virgin and Nike sent a comminique to 130 environment ministers and 70 heads of state in lead up to the Bali summit saying that early action on climate change outweighs the costs of not acting:
(“The scientific evidence is now overwhelming," the communique says. "As business leaders, it is our belief that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change outweigh the costs of not acting.")

AGAINST
Mr Howard refused to sign to the first phase of the Kyoto protocol arguing it would unfairly damage Australia's energy-export based economy and cost jobs. He also argued the pact unfairly excludes big developing countries like China and India from committing to cuts.

Recently, Alan Moran, from the Institute of Public Affairs, wrote (in an opinion piece) that Mr Rudd’s pledge to ratify Kyoto will plunge Australia into recession.

But what do you think? Is it a good idea that Australia is signing the Kyoto protocol? (Should Australia have done it ages ago…or do you fear the consequences that signing the pact could have?)

Our final show for 2007 is approaching, and we’re planning something a little different.

On December 16 we’ll be holding the Open House Christmas Party at Table for Twenty in Surry Hills. There’ll be coffee and desert, special guests like Darlene Zschech and former NRL player and author Jason Stevens, and I’d like you to be part of our live audience.

Tickets are just $15, but are limited, so if you’d like to be part of grand finale for the year, click here to book online as soon as you can, or call 02 9854 7000 to claim your seat.

I hope to see you at the Open House Christmas Party!

Join me this week for our second last show of the year! We’ll be exploring The Golden Compass. Critics say its atheist propaganda disguised as a children’s movie. Find out if that assessment’s true or exagerated with our roundtable discussion.

Christian communicator Rebecca Manley Pippert will be our special guest, and we’ll chat to NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione to discover the Christian belief that drives him.

If you didn't catch our roundtable discussion on The Golden Compass - the new film based on the first book of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy - make sure you listen to the podcast! You can read Mark Hadley's review of the books here.

In addition, film critic Jeffrey Overstreet has some great questions to ask your children who read the book that will help them process what they read:

1. If we cast off all "authority" and set up "free will" as the ultimate source of guidance, where will that get us?
2. Has the world shown us that the human heart is a trustworthy "compass"?
3. Does free will lead us always to the right choice?
4. If the heroes accept the "truth" of the alethiometer (the compass itself), aren't they letting themselves be guided by just another source of truth—another "Authority"? But didn't the story tell us "Authority" is bad and we should only follow our own hearts?
5. If there are "many truths," then aren't these heroes being as self-righteous and wicked as the oppressors by demanding that their version of the truth is better than others?
6. What is so inspiring about the battle between the bears? Hasn't this story led us to a place where it's just "survival of the fittest" all over again? Should we really hope that the world falls into the hands of the strongest fighter, rather than into the hands of love?
   

I had an interesting conversation with a couple of friends this week. Steve was telling me about a holiday he and his wife had just spent in Hobart. I’d also been in Hobart recently and so we got talking about Mt Wellington, the Salamanca Markets and some of the other attractions of the city.

Then Steve said, ‘Hey, the casino there has the best all-you-can eat buffet too.’ Well, this got Andy, my other friend, into the discussion. His first response was this: ‘How can you eat at a casino restaurant and not be supporting gambling?’ Andy’s reasoning went like this: the restaurants are deliberately cheap to entice people to gamble and gambling ruins thousands of lives each year, so by eating there you’re in some way supporting (perhaps even subsidising) the system. But for Steve it was simply a cheap meal. He never went to gamble, and didn’t feel any temptation to do so.

Andy’s comments got Steve thinking. Perhaps he wasn’t doing the best thing. And that’s when he asked me if we’d explore it as our everyday dilemma.

How do you feel about the issue? If you eat at a casino’s bistro are you supporting gambling?

How are you preparing your teenager to live in a society where pornography is so available? This week we spoke to Dr Michael Fllod from the University of Wollongong who told us the results of his research on porn and children: younger children are distressed by it, teenagers are liberalised by it and are more prone to sexism, and for adults there's a greater propensity for sexual violence.

The broader issue seems to be our young people’s access to sexualised images, and the impact it’s having on them. This week Mission Australia released a report, which found that the primary concern of young people aged between 11 and 24 is body image. Young people are more concerned about body image, than they are about family conflict, bullying, stress, drugs and alcohol.

Melinda Tankard Reist, from Women’s Forum Australia, has told News Limited that young girls are facing all sorts of pressure to look like women in porn films, whether it be through the clothes they wear, through to even considering having plastic surgery.

Do you talk to your teenager about issues relating to sex and the media? How do you even begin to discuss it? What’s worked – and what hasn’t worked?

Have you ever been so stirred by injustice… that you’ve been compelled into taking action?

Tonight we heard from Saddleback pastor and author Kay Warren – how she felt that she couldn’t get to the end of her life and feel satisfied if she didn’t do anything to address the issue of HIV AIDS.

She said she reached a ‘fork in the road’ – after reading one day about HIV AIDS in a newspaper article.

She knew that she could either continue on in life and forget about the problem, or allow herself to be affected by it, learn more about it – and take action to do something about it.

Have you ever been stirred by an issue so strongly that it’s compelled you to take action?

• Maybe a trip overseas to a developing country opened your eyes to global poverty and caused you to take a career change when you got home
• Maybe homelessness in your own suburb or city stirred you to work in a soup kitchen, or help someone get off the streets
• Maybe discovering the number of orphans in the world caused you to adopt one
• Maybe you had a troubled upbringing and you became a counselor so that you could help people going through the same problems you went though

What’s the issue that, once discovered, could not be ignored?

It’s been a wonderful year for Open House. We’ve been inspired by Philip Yancey, Max Lucado and Marina Prior. We’ve talked about homelessness, climate change and even Harry Potter! Now join me for our final show for 2007.

Darlene Zschech, Jason Stevens, the world’s best barista and more—listen in for a night of wonderful guests and live music as we broadcast from Table for Twenty in Sydney’s Surry Hills.

It’s our final show! So, please don’t miss it.

What a great time we had last Sunday at the Open House Christmas Party. Funky location, coffee and cake, great interviewees, the warmest of guests and the smoothest music all listened to by our wonderful national audience. Take a look at the photos to see what was happening as you listened.

While Open House is on holidays, we’re giving you a second-listen to the best interview guests of 2007. Best-selling author Max Lucado, anti-slavery campaigner David Batstone, jazz great James Morrison, gangster-turned-evangelist Nicky Cruz, British hostage Terry Waite, the man behind the Millenium Goals Jeffrey Sachs, Australia’s leading lady of musical theatre Marina Prior, Alister McGrath’s response to the God Delusion, Philip Yancey, Katherine Patterson, Rebecca St James, former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and more... these interviews are not to be missed, even the second time around! Click here to find a station near you, or here to stream or download the podcasts.

Have a holy Christmas, a wonderful new year, enjoy The Best of Open House across the summer, and we'll catch you February 10 for the new show.

We might be on holidays but planning never stops for Open House! In no time at all we'll gather around the whiteboard, coloured pens in hand, to dream, create and plan out Open House for the new year.

So, we need your input and ideas.

Who would you like to hear on Open House in 2008? Which personalities, authors, artists, activists, preachers, teachers, wise guides and thought shapers inspire or intrigue you? Whose story would you most like to listen to, and whose wisdom would you most like to absorb? Don't hold back - you just never know who we may be able to get on Open House.

Similarly, What topics would you like us to explore in 2008? What questions about life, faith and culture would you like answers to? What issues does humanity most need to address? What problems are you currently facing? What most confuses you about God, Jesus and the Christian faith?

The whiteboard is clear and all ideas are welcome, so write them up!