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Leonel Lake Mitchell was born on July 23, 1930 in New York. He earned his undergraduate degree in sacred theology from Berkeley Divinity School and his master’s degree from the General Theological Seminary. In 1954 he was ordained as a deacon and a priest of The Episcopal Church. In 1964, Mitchell received a doctorate in liturgics from General Theological Seminary, the first ever awarded by an Episcopal seminary.

In 1971, after eighteen years serving as a parish priest in the dioceses of Albany and New York, Mitchell pursued a full-time teaching career as an assistant professor of liturgics at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. He went on to become professor of liturgics, as well as a lecturer in Church history and liturgy at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (1978) and remained on the faculty until his retirement in 2005. An expert in his field, Mitchell not only authored multiple books on liturgy but was also instrumental in revising the 1979 Book of Common Prayer.

Leonel Lake Mitchell died on May 23, 2012 in South Bend, Indiana.

World Mission in Church and Society has been known by a number of titles over the years. Initially called the Foreign Mission Department of the National Council, it was changed to the Overseas Department after the reorganization of National Council in October of 1942. From 1969 to 1971 the office was known as Overseas Relations, and from 1972 to 1974 it was called Jurisdictional Relations. In 1975, it became the Department of Mission under the executive direction of Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning. In 1978, the department became known as National and World Mission, and finally in 1980, World Mission in Church and Society.

As the Church’s conception of overseas work evolved, so did the work of the office. While it continued to support schools, hospitals, and missions established during the Church's early involvement overseas, the focus increasingly turned to the cultivation of networks of support between independent churches in the Anglican Communion. The Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence (MRI) program of the early 1960s committed the Church to sharing its resources generously with struggling Anglican dioceses around the globe seeking their footing in newly-independent nations. The Overseas Department (as it was still known at that time) was heavily involved in coordinating funding, sending workers, and setting up channels of communication with these groups.

From the MRI program, other initiatives evolved, including Partners in Mission and Companion Diocese relationships, intended to connect the American church with Anglican partners across the globe on a personal basis through cultural study, discussion, and mission work. While much of the work in these programs was diocesan, the office coordinated these efforts on the national level. It also administered a certain amount of funding from the Venture in Mission program as seed-money to aid overseas dioceses with much-needed infrastructure and other projects.

Apart from its work with the global Anglican Communion, the office also worked on ecumenical matters, participating in initiatives of the Church World Service, the National Council of Churches, and other ecumenical organizations. In 1989, World Mission in Church and Society became the International Ministries sub-group of the Witness and Outreach Committee of the Executive Council.

Julia Chester Emery was appointed secretary of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions in 1876, after her sister Mary Abbott Emery resigned the position. During her forty-year tenure she directed the expansion of the Woman’s Auxiliary into every domestic and missionary diocese of The Episcopal Church and was key to the founding and growth of the United Offering (now the United Thank Offering). She traveled overseas extensively to promote the Auxiliary by addressing the woman’s missionary congress in London in 1897, representing the Diocese of New York at the Pan-Anglican Congress in 1908, and visiting mission stations throughout Europe and Asia. In addition, she authored several books, including “A Century of Endeavor” (1921), the centennial history of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. Julia Emery is commemorated in the Episcopal Calendar of the Church Year on January 9th.

In addition to Mary Abbott and Julia Chester, their sisters, Susan Lavinia Emery (1846-1914) and Margaret Theresa Emery (1849-1925) were involved with The Episcopal Church and the Woman’s Auxiliary, although to a much lesser degree.