This is how the reference book "Insight on the Scriptures" article explains the connection (p806)
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The question remains concerning the application of the figure of the faithful and discreet slave, or steward, and what his dispensing food to the domestics represents.
Commentators often view this as a general exhortation to any and all who have individual positions of responsibility in the Christian congregation. The requirement of faithfulness in discharging responsibility clearly applies to all such. (Compare Mt 25:14-30; Tit 1:7-9.) Yet, the impossibility of each and every one of these individuals being placed over “all” his master’s belongings at the same time, the time of the master’s arrival, is obvious. This, however, does not require that the “slave” prefigure only one particular person who would be so privileged. The Scriptures contain examples of the use of a singular noun to refer to a collective group, as when Jehovah addressed the collective group of the Israelite nation and told them: “You are my witnesses [plural], . . . even my servant [singular] whom I have chosen.” (Isa 43:10) Similarly, the figure of the unfaithful “evil slave” could apply to a collective group in the same way that “the antichrist” is shown to be a class made up of individual antichrists.—1Jo 2:18; 2Jo 7.
Those forming the Christian congregation are referred to by the apostle Paul as “members of the household of God” (Eph 2:19; 1Ti 3:15), and the same apostle shows that ‘faithful stewardship’ among such household members involved the dispensing of spiritual truths on which those becoming believers would ‘feed.’ (1Co 3:2, 5; 4:1, 2; compare Mt 4:4.) Whereas this was a prime responsibility of those appointed as ‘shepherds’ of the flock (1Pe 5:1-3), the apostle Peter shows that such stewardship of the divine truths was actually committed to all the ‘chosen ones,’ all the spirit-anointed ones, of the Christian congregation. (1Pe 1:1, 2; 4:10, 11) Thus the entire anointed Christian congregation was to serve in a united stewardship, dispensing such truths. At the same time the individual members making up such composite body, or the “domestics” making up the “house” of God (Mt 24:45; Heb 3:6; Eph 2:19), would also be recipients of the “food” dispensed. (Heb 5:11-14; compare 1Co 12:12, 19-27.) Expanded responsibility would result from faithfulness maintained until the master’s promised ‘arrival.’—Mt 24:46, 47; Lu 12:43, 44.
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Any comments, anyone?
Ozzie