Imagine being the manager of a major league baseball team. I would ask you to imagine being the manager of the Kansas City Royals, but this fantasy involves a championship, and one can only dream so much. Anyway…you are the manager of a contending major league team.

You have a star pitcher who is in the final year of a four-year contract. While expecting to re-sign with the team for the following season, he is told that he is the linchpin of your hopes to win the division. As you near the conclusion of the regular season, you begin to up his per game pitch count from 120 pitches to 170 pitches. While many complain that you will ruin the pitcher’s long-term career by destroying his arm, you justify your actions by reminding yourself and anyone who will listen that this is the team’s one opportunity to win the World Series.

Amazingly, you do win the division, the pennant and ultimately the World Series. Your star pitcher is named MVP of both the league championship and World Series. You are lauded as a brilliant manager who, despite the long-standing cost to your players, finally brought a championship to your city.

Sure enough, spring training begins with the teams star weak and performing poorly. As the regular season begins, he is placed on injured reserve. The team physician announces that the pitcher will need major surgery to repair a torn rotator cuff that was undoubtedly caused by overabundance of work the prior fall.

The team, with the smell of success in the air, decides it wants another championship, and it can’t afford the now former star’s salary. Paying his salary while he rehabilitates is more than the team can stomach. They cut him and move on to another young pitcher.

You may ask – how could the management of a team be so heartless. How could they overwork a pitcher taking him to a level of ridiculous pitch counts and then cut him when he is placed on injured reserve?

I asked this same question over the weekend. I met with a group of elders (the management) at a local church. Their pastor (star pitcher) is clearly mentally, emotionally and spiritually exhausted (injured reserved) following a lengthy church conflict, which pitted the church against a corrupt denomination.

Miraculously, the elders changed their minds and recommended a sabbatical to allow for time to heal, rest and rejuvenate. Yet, how many pastors are released while on ‘injured reserve’? How many pastoral ‘injuries’ result from extended hours, a crushing weight of stress combined with unrealistic expectations?

Are you a pastor on ‘injured reserve’? Inform the management.

Are you management? Whatever it takes, get your pastor the rest and recovery he so desperately needs.