Three clergy and six laymen representing four congregations met with John Stark Ravenscroft, Bishop of the Diocese of North Carolina, presiding.

The University of the South, located on the Cumberland Plateau in Sewanee, Tennessee, however, helped the fledgling diocese in matters of clergy development.

Vander Horst's bishop coadjutor, William E. Sanders, maintained offices in Knoxville to serve the eastern third of the state, while a suffragan bishop (with no right of succession to the Diocesan position, unlike Sanders), W. Fred Gates, Jr., worked out of Memphis from 1966 to 1982 to tend to churches in the western third of Tennessee; he also served as the Diocese's chief financial officer.

[3] The process for division of the state into three territories began when Vander Horst (who opposed it steadfastly during his episcopate) retired in 1977, under the aegis of his successor, Sanders.

[5] Beginning with the Herlong episcopate in the 1990s, the diocese embarked on an aggressive church extension program, particularly to the fast-growing suburbs of Nashville.

Most of the clergy recruited to serve those missions were conservative evangelical in orientation, and some of them, along with their laity, expressed sympathy for the Anglican realignment movement after V. Gene Robinson, a non-celibate gay man, was consecrated to the episcopacy of New Hampshire in 2003.

Prior to that time, the general theological orientation among Tennessee Episcopalians had been toward liberalization and tolerance, especially since the 1960s, despite outspoken opposition by traditionalists.

Disappointed in the results of the election, and fueled by the national church's refusal to reconsider its socially liberal positions on numerous issues including homosexuality, some conservatives began to withdraw from the diocese and align with alternate Anglican structures.

Some of the effects from the dismay on the part of conservatives include the following: During the 2013 Diocesan Convention, Bauerschmidt announced that the Diocese would relocate its offices to the property in September 2013.