A Great Ethics Question

There is a blog that I like to read written by a guy named Kevin. His blog page is the one that I found the blograte thing on. His post today, asked a very good ethics question. I wanted to share it with you. Here it is:

"One of your best friends has struggled with alcholism, but has been clean for 2 years. He is a Christian, and has just recently starting getting drunk again. Your desire is to once again walk closely with him and try to help him. The elders in your church are asking that you disassociate from him because he is defaming the name of Christ with his behavior (he has been warned of this step if he fell again). What are you going to do? Are you going to follow your heart, and walk with your friend? Doing so will result in willfully defying your spiritual authority under the covering of your leaders. Will you obey your leaders and disassociate from your friend? Doing so will result in breaking your conscious about what you should do for your friend. What do you do?"

So, I post this blog as a question to everyone. What would you do in this situation? Leave me comment and let me know. I will post my decision a bit later.