The ecumenical movement is given full support, the Church being a member of the National Council of Churches in New Zealand and of the World Council of Churches. The Most Rev. Campbell West-Watson, Primate and Archbishop from 1940 to 1950, played a prominent part in the foundation of the National Council of Churches in New Zealand in 1941 and attended the First Assembly of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in 1948. There was also representation at the Second and Third Assemblies at Evanston and New Delhi.

The overseas mission work is coordinated under the New Zealand Anglican Board of Missions with the main emphasis placed on work undertaken by the dioceses of Melanesia and Polynesia and the New Zealand Church Missionary Society. In 1963 church people contributed just over £100,000 for this work. Many recruits, both clergy and laymen, are supplied for work in the mission field.

Social service work claims full attention and the various dioceses provide children's homes, old people's homes, city missions, and hostels for students, etc. There has been a recent change in the method of caring for children, with the institutional orphanage slowly being replaced by cottage homes, each with a limited number of children. Arrangements are also made for foster home care.

There is at present a period of expansion due mainly to the need for establishing the Church in new housing areas. Fund-raising campaigns of various sorts have resulted in the total income of the Church being increased from £677,000 in 1955 to 1,683,000 in 1963. A new cathedral at Napier in the diocese of Waiapu was dedicated in 1960 and new cathedrals are being built at Auckland and Wellington. There are plans for extending the Christchurch Cathedral by adding new vestries on the north and south sides of the chancel.