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The first issue of “The Witness was published on January 6, 1917. The Rt. Rev. Irving Peake Johnson, of Colorado, was the first editor-in-chief and also formed the first board of directors for the publication. William B. Spofford succeeded Johnson as editor. In the earlier years, The Witness combined traditional church news and advertising with impassioned editorials concerning workers' rights and other issues of religious and social consequence.

Sometime in the 1940s, Irving Johnson and William B. Spofford, along with several other men, established the Episcopal Church Publishing Company (ECPC) that continued to publish The Witness. After Spofford’s death in 1972, publication temporarily ceased. Resuming in 1974 after the formation of a new board of trustees, the first issue featured the irregular ordination to the priesthood of 11 women deacons in Philadelphia.

Although it had undergone changes in frequency of publication and appearance, The Witness retained its emphasis on social action and justice in light of the gospel. Its roots remained Episcopal, but its readership ecumenical. Publication ceased in 2003.

The Episcopal Service for Youth was formed in 1911 as The Church Mission of Help (CMH). Its original purpose was to promote family life by assisting unwed mothers to remain with their families and make it possible for them to take care of their children for at least the first two years. The scope of its case work grew through the 1920s to include preventative care for at-risk children. By 1930, it had not only expanded its scope, but also added 13 more societies to its mission field.

The Episcopal Church continued to support CMH, but in the face of declining diocesan funding, the General Convention cut its appropriation by half in 1934. As a result, the bylaws of the organization were radically amended along with a substantial reduction in staff. In 1945, after much discussion, the name of the organization was changed to The Episcopal Service for Youth to better reflect its purpose and better appeal to the young people whom it served. In 1960, much of the society's work was assumed by the Department of Christian Social Relations. The Episcopal Service for Youth continued primarily as a scholarship organization until its dissolution in 1976.

Founded in 1980 as an independent national organization of Episcopal women, the Episcopal Women's History Project has played an important role in recovering and documenting the lives of women who have made outstanding contributions to The Episcopal Church. The Project aims to raise awareness about the historic place of women in the Church and their ethnic, racial, regional, and class diversity. Since its formation, the group has produced historical resources, conducted oral history interviews, published a newsletter, distributed grants, and supported and encouraged research and scholarship related to the historical role of women in The Episcopal Church.

The Executive Office of the General Convention (GCO) is one of the three offices of The Episcopal Church. The others are the Office of the Presiding Bishop and the Office of the President of the House of Deputies.

The GCO administers the governance of the Church in a variety of ways, including organizing and overseeing the triennial General Convention, supporting the activities of the various interim bodies of the General Convention, participating in official meetings of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, generating the Church’s annual Parochial Report, and promoting the ministry of the ecumenical, inter-religious, and inter-Anglican bodies of the Church.

In addition, the GCO supports the Executive Officer in their role as corporate Secretary of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, Secretary of the Executive Council, and Registrar of the General Convention.

Gailor Industrial School (Mason, Tennessee) was founded in 1905 by the Rt. Rev. Thomas F. Gailor III, Bishop of Tennessee, and first became affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) in 1921. The school was originally named in part for the donor, Rev. Charles A. Hoffman of New York, and then renamed Gailor Industrial School in honor of Bishop Gailor after his death in 1935.

Gailor Industrial School developed into a four-year high school for girls and boys, including boarders. Fire completely destroyed the school in 1945 but it was rebuilt and continued to function. ACI appears to have discontinued funding the school in 1949. The year the school closed is not known.

Frances Joseph-Gaudet, an African American woman, founded Gaudet Normal and Industrial School (New Orleans, Louisiana) in 1900. Mrs. Gaudet raised the money necessary to buy land for the school and served as its first principal.

Originally called the Gaudet Boarding School for Boys, then the Colored Industrial Home and School, it grew from a home for orphaned and disadvantaged African American children to an elementary and high school for boarders and day students.

In 1921, Mrs. Gaudet turned the school over to the Diocese of Louisiana, at which time the school came under the supervision of the American Church Institute (ACI). Gaudet developed a cooperative relationship with Dillard University, an historically black university built near the Gaudet campus in 1935. The elementary portion of Gaudet’s curriculum was discontinued by 1946, and the school then became known as Gaudet Episcopal High School. ACI continued its funding until about 1955 when the school closed and the Gaudet Episcopal Home opened in the same quarters.

The General Board of Religious Education was canonically established in 1910 by General Convention to unify and develop religious education across the Church. Initially, the Board was meant to work on increasing Christian education at the primary and secondary levels, with particular emphasis on Sunday Schools. Membership consisted of the Presiding Bishop as ex officio President, along with seven bishops, seven clerical members, and seven lay members, all appointed triennially by the presiding officers of their respective Houses. In addition to these 22 members, each of the eight Missionary Departments was to organize a Sunday School Convention, at which it would elect two delegates who would also be members of the General Board.

In 1913 the canon was amended, reducing the number of representatives from each Missionary Department to one. General Convention also introduced the system of Provinces in that year, and accordingly the “Sunday School Conventions of the Missionary Departments” were renamed as the “Provincial Boards of Religious Education.” Spurred by a decline in postulants for clerical orders, the scope of the work quickly widened, including a new emphasis on campus ministries and theological seminaries. The Board organized its efforts under four new departments, which it reported on to General Convention in 1916: Parochial Education, Secondary Education, Collegiate Education, and Theological Education.

The General Board of Religious Education became the Department of Religious Education in 1919, when General Convention voted to replace the Board of Missions with the Presiding Bishop and National Council.

The General Field Services unit was established in 1965 as one of the five divisions of the Department of Christian Education. It acted as a consultation service to Episcopal dioceses, missionary districts, and other Church organizations, offering guidance regarding educational programs, training opportunities, and instructional materials. It also participated in educational research and development projects. The unit was discontinued in 1968 at the time of the total reorganization of the Executive Council and subsequent operational changes. In its four years of existence, its administrators were the Rev. Edward T. Atkins (1965-1966) and the Rev. Stanley Plattenburg (1967-1968).

The Guild of Scholars of the Episcopal Church (the Guild) emerged in 1939 when Robert Root, Norman Pittenger, Thomas S.K. Scott-Craig, and William Eddy agreed to call together like-minded Churchmen into an association of college and university contacts with the common goal of promoting the Christian faith and scholarship in institutions of higher learning. At the first conference, held in 1940 at Hobart College and attended by fifteen scholars representing eleven institutions, the decision was made to establish a formal association within The Episcopal Church.

After a second conference, also held in 1940, the group met in 1941 under the name of the Easter Conference of the Guild of Scholars. The current name was adopted in 1949, just a year before the Guild began to hold its annual meetings exclusively at the General Theological Seminary. While there were initially hopes that regional chapters would be formed as a nucleus of a national association of Episcopal teachers and scholars, by 1950 the Guild had relinquished the idea of an expanded association of local chapters in favor of a single national conference.

In 1966 Virginia Harrington of Barnard College was the first woman invited as a guest; she became a member in 1968. In the succeeding years other women were invited first as guests and eventually to membership. The membership was also extended later to those in the scientific, medical, and technical fields. Membership is limited to the laity, unless a member is ordained after being admitted, with the one exception being the honorary membership granted to one of the original founders, the Rev. Norman Pittenger. The Guild continues with members from a wide range of academic and creative disciplines meeting annually to share their work, although meeting locations now vary.

The House of Bishops (HoB) was established in 1789, four years after the election of The Episcopal Church’s first Bishop, Samuel Seabury. All bishops of The Episcopal Church, active or retired, make up the House of Bishops, with the Presiding Bishop as president. With nearly 300 active members, the HoB comprises half of the Church’s governing body. Eligible members include all diocesan and assisting bishops elected or canonically appointed from the dioceses, area missions, and special jurisdictions of the United States and nineteen other countries, including a number of churches in Europe, Latin America, Taiwan, and Haiti.

Along with the House of Deputies (the other governing body of The Episcopal Church), the HoB meets every three years to adopt legislation. Between conventions, they meet twice a year in a non-legislative capacity and, acting in their pastoral and teaching mode, may explore issues of theological, social or mission concern.

The House of Deputies met in General Convention in 1789 when the lay and clerical deputies established the order, governance, and first public statements of The Episcopal Church. The lay and clerical deputies elected Bishop William White its president, and among other early acts, provided for the keeping and publication of the journals and other papers of the Convention. The House of Deputies has been called the "senior house" for its early organization and its swift undertaking of the task of Church unity and oversight of the corporal affairs of the new body. It established what is today the oldest continuing body of The Episcopal Church, the State of the Church Committee, which annually implements the parochial and diocesan reports that render a reliable statistical profile of the population and health of The Episcopal Church. The House of Deputies operates between General Convention sessions through its special appointed bodies and the joint committees, commissions, boards and agencies. The ministry of the President and presiding officer of the House embodies the mutual ministry leadership of lay and clerical members of the Church in matters of governance, polity, and mission.

The Joint Commission on Renewal was formed as the result of a call for Church renewal from the House of Bishops during its 1966 meeting. The group of 18 members was appointed by Presiding Bishop Hines in January 1967 and initially called the Committee to Develop a Council. Its task was to prepare a report for the House of Bishops meeting in September of that year.

The group presented a document that was frank in describing the immense difficulty of navigating the deep tensions in the Church, but that argued for the absolute necessity of continuing the work of renewal. The committee felt that the process of renewal would have to be developed ecumenically and requested the creation of a successor committee, which was approved by the 1967 General Convention. As a result, the Joint Commission on Renewal was formed, answerable not only to the House of Bishops but to the entire General Convention.

The Commission’s main task was to report to the Special General Convention in 1969. At that session, the Commission’s resolution declaring the Church’s readiness to participate ecumenically in a process of renewal was passed by both Houses. The Commission also set up a “gathering space” for attendees to participate in discussion after sessions in a casual setting, fostering openness and dialogue. At the 1970 General Convention in Houston, the Commission reported that its main task had been accomplished and, by its own recommendation, was dissolved.

At the 1937 General Convention, the Joint Commission on Revision of the Hymnal (JCRH) was formed and authorized to undertake a revision of The Hymnal 1916 with the goal of presenting its proposed changes to the General Convention in 1940 for approval. It was renewed in 1943, 1946, and 1949 to continue work on a companion handbook to The Hymnal 1940 that would contain authoritative information about the words, music, and authors of the hymns. After the publication of the companion book, the Joint Commission was discharged by the 1952 General Convention.

Organized lay ministries work developed during the late 1960s, beginning with The Episcopal Church’s effort to integrate women more fully into the institutional Church. In 1968, the Executive Council created the Ad Hoc Committee on Lay Ministries, and in 1969 the Committee was reappointed as the Special Committee on Lay Ministries. The 1970 General Convention adopted the recommendations of the Committee and created a Program Group of the Executive Council with members from the Special Committee on Lay Ministries, the Committee for Women, and the Executive Council. The first staff officer for Lay Ministries, Francis Young, began work in 1971.

The purpose of the Lay Ministries Office was to further the ministry of the laity in the secular structure of society, spurring the Church towards greater support of this ministry, and promoting participation of all kinds of laity in the work and decision-making of the Church. Lay Ministries pursued these goals through various activities including the publication of the “The 99%” magazine for lay ministers, the organization of conferences and consultations on topics relevant to lay ministry, and the facilitation of networks and programs to connect various stakeholders in the field of lay ministry. Although the Lay Ministries Office disappeared as a distinct entity in 1980, its work was carried out under different titles.