From Larry James

Forgive me, but heaven gets in the way of lots of important work.

Hold on, now. Before you fire off a red hot e-mail response or call me on the phone or assemble a church tribunal, hear me out.

For twenty-five years I served churches as a pastor. For the past ten years I have been a member of an inner city church. So, I feel like I know how church folk think–both middle-class and under-class church members.

Most churches in the United States focus on the needs of their members. Their most pressing concern seems to be eternity and how it will be spent. Naturally, the weekly sermons in most of these churches deal with the issues of salvation: how to obtain it, how to hold on to it, and what it will mean eventually. Being “right with God” remains the central concern. Most of a church’s resources follow this fundamental focus so that almost everything flows toward getting people over safely to “the other side.” It has been my observation that, ironically, the more a church speaks of God’s love and grace, the more preoccupied it becomes with the afterlife.

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