As Hedrick pointed out, the Christian belief is the resurrection [of the body]. The Apostles' Creed which Roman Catholic and most mainline Protestant churches recite every week in our worship reads, "We believe ... in the resurrection of the body", the original Latin says "carnis resurrectionem", quite literally, "the resurrection of the flesh". This comes from the much older Greek creed known as the Old Roman Symbol, which reads "σαρκὸς ἀνάστασιν" (sarkos anastasin), again "the resurrection of the flesh".
Because the Christian belief has always been that even as Christ has been raised (bodily) from the dead, so do all who hope in Christ have the promise from God in Jesus that we too shall be raised from the dead to eternal life in the world to come.
This is a rather distinct idea from the idea of an "immortal soul" which is, in essence, a Platonic doctrine, that is, it comes to us from Plato. I don't have much use, personally, for the Platonic doctrine of the soul. So I don't find it helpful to talk about "going to heaven" or about souls "beaming up into heaven" etc. I don't think that is how Christianity has historically understood things.
Instead Christianity, as Judaism did before, maintains that between death and resurrection the individual exists in a state of waiting. This "intermediate state" can be said to either be one of comfort with God and the righteous who have gone before, or else it can be described as agonizing. In the common beliefs of Jesus' time, the place of the dead--She'ol, translated as Hades in the Gospels--was divided into two halves, one known as Paradise or "Abraham's Bosom", and the other called Gehenna.
In Christian language those who have died in Christ are with Him, in some capacity, waiting for the resurrection. This has typically been described as "going to heaven", though the Bible itself never really speaks this way, and it's not found in much Christian literature either. But the point is that those who have hope in Jesus, after death, are not in a state of dread or fear, they are not lost, or wandering as ghosts or shades. They are comforted with Christ, present with Him, until the day He comes and they are raised up from the dead bodily to eternal life.
But this intermediate state isn't the central focus, the central focus is on the resurrection of the dead. The Christian hope isn't to live as a disembodied ghost floating around in the sky, but to have real, material, bodily life in God's new creation, as God makes all things new, including this very earth we live upon. All creation is redeemed in Jesus, all creation will be restored.
-CryptoLutheran
