<p>14:23 <i>So when they had appointed elders in every church, and prayed with fasting<em>- </em></i>The Greek means literally to stretch the hand upon. It is only elsewhere used in 2 Cor. 8:19 of how the church chose Timothy to travel with Paul. Some argue that the hand stretching refers to voting, but this seems to me to be reading in modern principles of democracy; there is no evidence that democracy in the form of voting was what God ever used. Probably it means that they simply chose some elders, and there is no evidence that the Spirit guided them in this in any supernatural sense. But the point is that they didn't leave the new churches with no leadership structure- they created one. &quot;Elders&quot; literally means an older person; but all the believers were relatively young in the faith. Like many modern missionary situations, they did the best they could in terms of choosing wisely. But they didn't tell the new congregations that they were to just take everything in turns and muddle along; they appointed elders. Because like it or not, people need leadership. Given that they probably didn't know the candidates that well, and most were at the same stage of immaturity in faith, we can understand why they &quot;prayed with fasting&quot; about this. They took most seriously the future wellbeing of these groups; they didn't just baptize them and leave them.<br /><i><br /><em>They committed them to the Lord </em></i><i>in whom they had believed</i>- Given the difficulties in choosing elders, we can understand why they just gave them over to the Lord Jesus as their good shepherd. For as passing missionaries there was little else practically they could do. Paul uses the same word in committing the elders to the Lord in Acts 20:32. Paul saw the lord Jesus as a very real entity and personage to whom he could hand over Gk. these new converts. We might infer that Paul felt he had personal responsibility for them, but now he had to leave, he handed them over to the Lord Jesus.</p>