I’m an elder in a Reformed evangelical church and would appreciate some counsel on a difficult pastoral question.

Can elders, as an exercise of pastoral wisdom and prudence, direct members in good standing to temporarily refrain from attending corporate worship and normal church activities in order to create space for healing and reconciliation?

In this situation, the elders would explicitly say that the members remain in good standing and that the separation is not church discipline.

How would you distinguish this from formal church discipline? Does Scripture give elders this kind of authority, and if so, what biblical principles or limitations should govern its use?

I’m especially interested in how Reformed churches and pastors would think through the distinction between pastoral wisdom and practical discipline in a situation like this.

UPDATE:

We have moved forward with the break. Communicating it to the church and the family thy they should refrain from attending and it’s not discipline. However, based on our observations, the break is not producing healing.

The elders have been communicating with the mediator about next steps, including whether a meeting at this point would be constructive.

We genuinely desire reconciliation and for the family to return. We’re asking the mediator to help us discern the most constructive next step, with the hope that a meeting can lead to genuine progress toward biblical reconciliation.

The family has tried appealing to us directly, including an appeal to love (see Philemon 8-9) and a request for a clear biblical path forward.

In my area there are no reformed churches, mostly SBC, IFB, non denominational and various charismatic/Pentecostal churches. I only learned about reformed teaching through YouTube and some reading. Any church I have ever been in after the sermon has an invitation to anyone who wants to receive Christ and a few would add to it "see the pastor after service" so they could make sure you understood the gospel and knew what regeneration was. In a reformed service when the sermon concludes what happens if someone listening wants to receive salvation? I agree alter calls can be deceiving and lead to false converts but I've never seen an alternative method that didn't involve an invitation. Forgive me for being ignorant to just about anything in the reformed services but I would have to drive over 100 miles to attend a service to see what it was like. In addition I won't hide that most of my scriptural understanding beyond very basic things taught in most conservative church's is from self study and hearing teachers through YouTube (I was raised in a Charismatic home but separated myself from that belief system)

How does your church meet the practical needs of the body?
Our church is fairly big (over 700) and we have a mercy budget but it seems like it is mainly reserved for emergency needs. But there are many regular church members who have various needs that seem to go unmet because the way the deacons distribute the funds is, what I would graciously describe as careful but am tempted to describe it as stingy.
I want to talk to an elder or deacon about this at some point but was curious what other reformed church do or how they handle this.
I believe that when we say we are meeting needs of the body that means practical needs like:
someone needs to replace their glasses but doesn't have insurance.
someone needs help with a large car repair
someone has a burdensome medical bill
Usually when someone keeps needing help from the deacons they say things like “we can’t make this a habit” or “is there a way we can make changes for a permanent solution?”
I don’t know but that all kind of sits wrong with me.
Any thoughts or feed back?

Never thought too much about this booklet but appears to be an original syllabus from van til. Just thought I’d share 😁

If you have requests that you would like your brothers and sisters to pray for, post them here.

11 Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. The earth and the heavens fled from his presence, and there was no place for them. 12 And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. Another book was opened, which is the book of life. The dead were judged according to what they had done as recorded in the books. 13 The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what they had done. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. 15 Anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire.

I know Christians are split on this but I wanted to know what reformed folks generally think on this matter. It definitely says the Book of Life was opened...why would Christ need to open the book of Life if the people standing in front of Him were all unbelievers?

Please let me know what your view is! Biblically =)