Shepherd the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight, not under compulsion, but voluntarily, not for dishonest gain, but willingly;
Exercising the oversight ... See under preceding verse.  As Dummelow, and many others, stressed, "Elders were not then distinguished from bishops as they soon afterward were."[10] This is plain from the word [@episkopos] from which "oversight" is translated.  This, of course, requires a date for the epistle prior to A.D. 70.  Very soon, however, the elevation of so called "bishops" to a rank and dignity they did not have in the New Testament began to appear; and "The omission of this clause from the Vatican and Sinaitic manuscripts was prompted by ecclesiastical reason,"[11] for the fear that elders might be supposed to have equal authority with bishops, which was of course true.  Incidentally, the close kinship of the Vatican and Sinaitic Manuscripts is evident in a thing like this, accounting for the fact of their correspondence in the treatment of  Mark 16:12-20.  For more on this, see the Introduction to my Commentary on Mark.