Mike and Kay Martin, founders of Laborers Together International, met in college in a traveling singing group called "Mission Crusaders." They have always had a heart for missions, being involved in their church's missions programs while growing up, including studying missions, attending missions conferences and reading numerous books written by missionaries.

They went on their first short-term missions trip in the early 1980s to Guatemala. While pastoring in Stephenville, Texas they began taking other people with them on missions trips and Laborers Together International was started. In 1997 Mike and Kay were given a prophecy by a missionary living in Spain. He saw them having a missions ministry which would be a place of training and sending out. This bore witness with what was already in their hearts, and was the beginning of their thinking that one day they would be in missions work full time.

LTI was officially incorporated in 1999, and in 2000 Mike and Kay started working with LTI full time. They began traveling to churches in the United States sharing the Word of God and the vision of LTI, as well as continuing to take short-term missions trips and ministering in other countries.