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The United Thank Offering (UTO) began in 1889 at the Triennial Meeting of the Woman’s Auxiliary as a special fund-raising initiative to support missionary work of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS). Since UTOs inception, they have been a form of self-organized participation by women in The Episcopal Church. The UTO has also existed as a component group of the DFMS and its women’s ministries agency, both of which were within the oversight authority of the Executive Council and its predecessor bodies.

In 1935, with annual budgets exceeding a quarter million dollars and close to a thousand grant requests, the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Auxiliary hired their first manager (called the assistant secretary) to coordinate the grant and public relations process under the direction of the National Council. In 1958, when the Woman’s Auxiliary was integrated into Church structure as the General Division of Women’s Work. The UTO staff officer was appointed directly by the Presiding Bishop for the first time. A decade later, the Executive Council introduced an important change when it subsumed women’s work and ministry under the umbrella of the Committee for Women in place of the General Division of Women’s Work. This change led directly to the recommendation to Council of two separate agencies: the Committee on Lay Ministries (for women) and a clearly independent UTO Committee to continue the fund-raising and grant allocation program. The UTO Committee was replaced by the UTO Board, with revised by-laws and a Memorandum of Understanding in 2012.

Initially the United Thank Offering was collected to fund missionaries and building projects; however, its scope expanded over its 125 year history to include grants for ministries that met societal needs, such as educational programs, childcare programs, and outreach to under-served populations.

Prior to the establishment of the Standing Liturgical Commission, liturgical matters were handled by a number of temporary committees and joint commissions. Its most immediate predecessor was the Joint Commission on the Revision and Enrichment of the Prayer Book, established by the 1913 General Convention to revise the Book of Common Prayer.

On the publication of the 1928 edition, the General Convention of 1928 voted to discharge the joint commission and establish in its place the Standing Liturgical Commission for the preservation and study of matters relating to the Book of Common Prayer as well as the development of other liturgical materials. The Standing Liturgical Commission carried out this mandate until the 1997 General Convention, when it was merged with the Standing Commission on Church Music to form the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.

At the 1973 General Convention, the Joint Commission on Church Music (JCCM) was renewed as the Standing Commission on Church Music (SCCM). The newly formed Standing Commission now served the Church in all matters pertaining to music, including serving as a link between associations of professional Church musicians and diocesan music commissions, assisting individual dioceses with courses and conferences on Church music, and collecting and collating material for future revisions of the Church Hymnal. It was also charged with reviewing The Hymnal 1940 and preparing recommendations to the next General Convention for a revision, which was ultimately approved in 1982 and published in 1985.

At the 1997 General Convention, the Committee on Structure recommended that the Standing Liturgical Commission and the Standing Commission on Church Music be merged into a single commission on worship, incorporating the current work of the two existing bodies, thus becoming the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.

St. Philip’s Normal and Industrial School in San Antonio, Texas was founded in1898 by the Rt. Rev. James Steptoe Johnson, Bishop of West Texas, and was headed by Artemesia Bowden as its dean from 1902 to 1954.

St. Philip’s was never administered by the American Church Institute (ACI), though appropriations were made to it from 1918 to 1931. It was incorporated into the San Antonio Independent School District in 1942 as St. Philip’s Junior College, affiliated with San Antonio Junior College under the control of the San Antonio Union Junior College District from 1946.

It began admitting white students in 1955; in 2003 the majority of its student body was Latino.

The Rev. James Solomon Russell founded St. Paul’s Normal and Industrial School in Lawrenceville, Virginia in 1888 and served as its principal until his death in 1935. He was succeeded by his son, the Rev. J. Alvin Russell.

In 1941 it began to offer a four-year degree program and changed its name to St. Paul’s Polytechnic Institute. The school’s name changed again to St. Paul’s College in 1957. At one time it was the largest of the American Church Institute’s (ACI) schools with over 1,500 students.

The school was affiliated with ACI until its dissolution in 1967.

St. Mark’s School (Birmingham, Alabama) was founded in 1891 as an outgrowth of St. Mark’s Church, with financial support from J. A. Van Hoose, a white Episcopal deacon and the 10th Mayor of Birmingham. It was the first institution in the city to offer secondary education to black students and was initially established as a girls’ boarding school.

St. Mark’s was an American Church Institute (ACI) school from 1912 to 1941 when it was dropped due to the exorbitant expense necessary to renovate its buildings. Calhoun School in Lowndes County, Alabama was brought under ACI oversight in its place. It is uncertain whether the school continued to operate after 1941.

St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute (Raleigh, North Carolina) was founded in 1867 by the Rev. J. Brinton Smith of the Freedman’s Commission and the Rt. Rev. Thomas Atkinson, Bishop of North Carolina, from the beginnings of a day and Sunday school for African American children of Christ Church Parish. Smith served as the first principal and Atkinson as the president of the Board of Trustees.

In 1893 the school changed its name to St. Augustine’s School. In 1919 the school became known as St. Augustine’s Junior College, then in 1928 as St. Augustine’s College. For some time it was the only four-year liberal arts college for African Americans sponsored by the Episcopal Church. It was one of the first schools to be affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) in 1906 and remained under that organization until ACI dissolved in 1967. It remains a four-year liberal arts college.

After an appeal to General Convention of the need for a hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina for African Americans, St. Agnes Hospital and Nursing School was founded in 1896. The hospital occupied buildings on the grounds of St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute and served as both a hospital and nurses’ training school. By 1931 it had grown to a 100-bed hospital serving 2,000 patients annually.

St. Agnes was affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) from approximately 1906 until 1958, when ACI discontinued appropriations in order to conform to its mission to support only church-related schools and in anticipation of a new county health system.

St. Agnes Nursing School closed in 1959.

The Special Committee on Theological Education in the Episcopal Church (TEEC) began in 1965 as an outgrowth of an initiative originating in the Division of Christian Ministries, part of Executive Council’s Home Department, to respond to a perceived crisis in recruitment, retention, and education of candidates for the ministry, which required careful study before any recommendations could be made to General Convention.

The Committee, chaired by Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, met for the first time on March 28, 1966. As part of its work, the Committee consulted seminarians and young clergymen to understand their experiences and concerns, and shared these findings with General Convention in their 1967 report.

The Committee saw the need for “an agency with power” to overhaul the Church’s entire system of theological education. It recommended the creation of a Board for Theological Education with members appointed by the Presiding Bishop and reporting to General Convention. The work of the Board was to find strategies for recruiting promising candidates to the ministry, to modernize the seminary system and improve its curricula, to determine necessary funding, and to expand educational opportunities to laymen and women.

The recommendation was adopted by the 1967 General Convention.

When the Church Pension Fund was established by the General Convention in 1913, no provision was made to include deaconesses. To rectify this, deaconesses formed their own not-for-profit corporation and began to raise funds.

On September 30, 1927, the Retiring Fund for Deaconesses (RFD) of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America was formally incorporated to provide financial assistance to retired and disabled deaconesses who were unable to provide for themselves.

Forty-five years later, on September 27, 1972, the RFD voted to change its name to The Retiring Fund for Women in the Diaconate in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America to reflect the ordination of women to the diaconate after the General Convention of 1970. It began operating under this name in 1973.

The RFD has since changed names twice more, both times to acknowledge an expanded membership. In 1998 it changed its name to The Fund for the Diaconate of The Episcopal Church in the United States of America, following a 1990 vote to admit male deacons. In 2018 it changed its name to The Fund for the Diaconate of the Episcopal Church, emphasizing its availability to all deacons of The Episcopal Church and continues to operate under that name.

Beginning with the Rev. William White in 1785, the President of the House of Deputies was elected at the start of each General Convention and held that office from the beginning of one convention to the beginning of the next. No canon made any provisions for this election until 1904 when Title III, Canon 1 was amended and changed to Canon 46 (in 2023, this is Title I, Canon 1). In 1946, the canon was amended again to specifically state that "The President, so elected, shall continue in office until the next meeting of the General Convention" (Title III, Canon 1.1(a)).

It appears that throughout the period of 1785-1961 there were no Vice Presidents of the House of Deputies. The 1904 canon only speaks to the election of the Secretary and President, and no mention of a Vice President is made in the journals. This changed in 1964 when the canons were amended to provide for the election of the President and Vice President, with terms running from the adjournment of one Convention to the adjournment of the next. In 1967, it was added that no person elected as President or Vice President could serve for more than three consecutive terms.

The primary role of the President of the House of Deputies was originally to preside over meetings of the House and ensure that necessary work was accomplished during the interim. Today, the role of the President includes presiding over the House of Deputies, serving as the Vice-Chair of the Executive Council, and as one of two Vice-Presidents of the DFMS. The president makes the majority of appointments to interim bodies and has been increasingly involved in their deliberations since 1990.

The Pacific Basin Conference was held June 19-25, 1983 at Hawaii Loa College, Kaneohe, Hawaii. Conceived by Bishop Wesley Frensdorff of the Diocese of Nevada, and hosted by Bishop Edmond Browning from the Diocese of Hawaii, the conference was attended by over 150 participants and delegates from 51 dioceses of the Anglican Communion around the Pacific Basin. Its purpose was to discuss Roland Allen’s teachings on missionary work and examine how they could be implemented in the Pacific region. These teachings included giving indigenous people the responsibility for leadership in mission churches and enabling lay persons to have an important, effective role as evangelists, relying on local leaders to carry out the work of the Church rather than absentee bishops.

Founded in 1902 by Wallace A. Battle, Okolona Industrial School (Okolona, Mississippi) did not become affiliated with The Episcopal Church until 1920 when the Diocese of Mississippi and the American Church Institute (ACI) assumed oversight. When Battle became Field Secretary for ACI in 1927, his wife Effie T. Battle took over as administrative head of the school and remained until the arrival of A.M. Strange in 1933.

The school had been renamed Okolona College in 1932. Strange is credited with most of the modernization of Okolona’s physical plant and equipment. In 1965 the Diocese of Mississippi decided to transfer its funding from Okolona College to areas of the state it considered having greater need. The school closed that same year. The campus remained unused until 1990 when the National Council of Negro Women purchased the site with plans of reinstating educational and other support programs for the African American community. The Okolona College site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.

From 1789 until 1919 (except for the brief period from 1792-1804), the senior bishop by date of consecration was automatically the Presiding Bishop (PB). In 1919 the PB was made president of the National Council which serves as the Board of Directors of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Service. Duties established at that time included presiding over meetings of the House of Bishops, acting as the executive head of all programs and mission departments, having authority to appoint interim officials and officers, and maintaining oversight of bishops. In 1964 the office was granted authority to appoint the President and Chair of the Executive Council.

In 1967, the duties of PB were brought together under one canon (Canon 2) and stipulated that the term of office be 12 years or until the PB reaches 65 years of age. It also named the PB as chief pastor and gave the office the responsibility for representing the church in its corporate capacity as well as responsibilities involving initiating and developing policy.

The Standing Commission on Structure studied the office further and reported in 1976 concerning the method of electing a PB. They concluded that the PB should continue to be elected by the House of Bishops and approved by the House of Deputies, rather than a joint session of the two houses. The General Convention gave the PB joint authority with the President of the House of deputies to appoint the General Convention Executive Secretary (this position was changed to Executive Officer in 1982).

The Presiding Bishop is the Chief Pastor and Primate of The Episcopal Church, which includes the United States and dioceses or congregations in Europe, Asia and Latin America that maintain continuing ties to the American province of the Anglican Communion. The Presiding Bishop is responsible for initiating new work, developing Church policy and strategy, leading the staff of the DFMS, and representing the Episcopal Church in major public engagements, the Anglican Communion, and ecumenical relationships. In addition, the PB acts as chairperson of Executive Council, President of the DFMS, and is presiding officer of the House of Bishops.

In the fall of 1911, deaconesses gathered for a week long retreat at St. Faith’s House for Deaconesses in St. Louis, Missouri and began to create a more formal organization. The National Conference of Deaconesses originated with the Central Committee of Deaconesses that first met in St. Louis, Missouri on October 21, 1916. The deaconesses used this Central Committee as an annual gathering prior to the triennial National Conference. The first National Conference was held in October 1919, in Detroit, Michigan and met every three years at the same time and city as the Church’s General Convention.

From the beginning, the deaconesses lobbied the General Convention for revisions to the Canons of the Church to establish clear requirements and responsibilities for their Order, just as any other clerical office requires. This line of reasoning evolved to the point that the deaconesses desired the same rights and privileges as their male counterparts. The Conference remained active throughout the 1950s. By the 1960s and 1970s, the Conference was advocating a canonical means to allow women deacons to become priests. Following a change to the Canons in 1970 that allowed women to be ordained as deacons the Conference became less active, but remained listed in the Episcopal Church Annual until the 1978 edition.