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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.

St. Margaret's House in Berkeley, California, had its origin in a deaconess training program initiated in 1907 by Edward L. Parsons, Rector of St. Mark's in Berkeley. Called at first St. Mark's Deaconess Training School, by 1910 it was known unofficially as St. Anne's House and officially as the Training School for Deaconesses in the Diocese of California, later the Training School for Deaconesses of the Eighth Missionary Department (1912). In 1914 it moved to a new home, St. Margaret's House, and was incorporated as the Deaconess Training School of the Pacific.

The School expanded to include a School for Christian Service, a Student House for women students at UC Berkeley, and a Church Service Center. In 1930, it relocated to larger quarters near its partners in education and added a Summer School of Religion, an extension department, field service, and a retreat and conference center to its broadening spectrum of activities. Eventually it came to identify itself as a graduate school, offering, in conjunction with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a two-year program leading to the Master of Arts in Christian Education degree. The name of the institution was formally changed to St. Margaret's House in 1950.

By the mid-1960s, the movement toward full equality for women in the church diminished the need for a separate women's training school. In 1966 the St. Margaret's House Board voted to terminate its educational programs. The Board of Trustees became the Berkeley Center for Human Interaction and Organizational Renewal, a non-profit unaffiliated with The Episcopal Church. Renamed the Strong Center in 1979, it eventually focused on the environment and became The Strong Foundation for Environmental Values, which is scheduled for dissolution at the end of 2023.