Elastigirl

Craig,

To continue on: I tend to see passages like this one as simply acknowledging the fact that groups of people automatically organize themselves into leaders and followers. This happens when a groups of friends goes out to eat or see a movie, at family reunions, even on Thanksgiving Day — it’s just how human beings are. Paul is simply giving good advice for the successful organizing of people who are about God’s business.

I think it’s kind of silly to diagram it all out as a specific patterned requirement for how to do church (“let’s see, we have overseers & their requirements, we have deacons & their requirements, and then of course women have their own set of reqirements & Paul lists each group separately so apparently each group is distinct…”). If one takes Paul’s every word as literal & binding on how we do everything, then logically only deacons have to be careful about their alcohol consumption. It’s therefore not so much of a big deal if overseers and presumably women are “given to much wine”.