e3 Partners Ministry

Can you imagine how our world would look if leaders across the world sought to reflect Jesus Christ in their day-to-day lives? The results would be transformational!

e3 Partners is a church planting organization, established in Dallas in 1987. We glorify God by making Him known to the nations. e3 Partners is one of the oldest church-planting organizations in existence, and we are proud that we are widely regarded as being the most effective. While others may share our mission, e3 Partners is uniquely effective. In fact, we are unaware of any organization which offers as many programs, has presence in as many communities across the world, or plants as many churches as we do in a single year.

We meet our core mission through three programmatic pillars: training, mobilization, and media. We train local leaders in communities across the world, teaching them how to share the Gospel as well as train others to do the same. We mobilize volunteers to serve both domestically and internationally through short-term as well as long-term mission trips. Finally, through "I Am Second" films, we inspire people to “live second," which simply means living out one's faith by putting the needs of others first.

Mobilization -- We send Christian missionaries all over the world to spread the Gospel, make disciples, and help catalyze church-planting movements. Travel has been deeply affected by the global pandemic; short-term mission trips have been halted since April 2020 and many of our expat missionaries have returned to the U.S. due to visa issues related to COVID-19.

The unanticipated and emergency needs associated with COVID-19 were an important reminder of the need for the backbone support of e3 Partners. One of the key benefits we offer to our missionaries is security. We have the resources and experience to act immediately to ensure the safety of all people traveling on behalf of our organization.

Another unexpected blessing of this time has been the development of virtual trips. Since April 2020, we have conducted 21 virtual trips with 375 participants. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive, and we have scheduled an additional 25 upcoming virtual trips. While we are resuming in-person travel to Beirut and Lebanon this month, we anticipate that virtual trips will be permanently integrated into our program offerings.

Training – Gospel training isn’t just for missionaries. Through a strategy known as 4 Fields, we emphasize the necessity of moving beyond evangelism to discipleship and church formation. We train believers to share the Gospel, disciple others, and plant churches.

The global pandemic spurred immediate changes in this area of programming as well. We successfully created and tested a prototype training package for virtual training. We anticipate that the need for virtual training will continue to expand as more and more people choose to stay home.

Media – Through our media ministry, I Am Second, we lift up the name of Jesus and help people discover a different way of life through the use of short films. I Am Second reaches those far from God, sharing raw stories of real people who found and embraced the hope of Jesus.

Our extensive library of films is easily accessible online and free for use by church leaders across the globe. I Am Second has spread throughout the nation and across the world. Hundreds of millions of views later, in over 150 countries, the message of I Am Second is resonating!

Training and Mobilization Capabilities – e3 Partners distinguishes itself from our church-planting peers through our ability to plant a large number of new churches in any given year. We are able to achieve this through our “train-the-trainer” model, which focuses on utilizing a single e3 missionary to train many indigenous students who demonstrate strong leadership skills and a desire to minister to their local communities.

For the purposes of clarity, I offer, below, a brief explanation of our terminology:

• Residential missionaries are employed by e3 Partners. They relocate to the communities they serve and typically live in that community for a minimum of two years. Their primary goal is to plant churches by developing local leaders who can carry the Gospel to the people in their respective communities.

• Indigenous missionaries are those identified by residential missionaries as local leaders in their communities, and who possess the natural leadership ability as well as the desire to enter into Christian ministry.

Students, or indigenous missionaries, are trained by residential missionaries using our proven 4 Fields curriculum, which includes: 1) identifying communities in need of the Gospel, 2) honing and sharing a personal testimony, 3) establishing new Christian congregations, and 4) identifying new leaders within that congregation to replicate the process.

This process allows our residential missionaries to achieve exponentially expanded results, far greater than what they, alone, could accomplish in a community. The proof is in the numbers; using the 4 Fields curriculum and train-the-trainer model, e3 Partners has evolved from supporting residential missionaries able to individually plant 45 churches in 7 years, to missionaries who are singularly responsible for the creation of 1,500 churches over 5 years.

Our model also ensures local sustainability of new churches; once established, new churches do not require ongoing monetary support from e3 Partners. Because our indigenous missionaries feel ownership of the process, locals embrace and sustain congregations beyond our initial support.

Media Capabilities – e3 Partners launched I Am Second in 2008, at a time when online video content was emerging as a new market. We have grown with the industry and, over the past 12 years, have honed our expertise in developing best-practice online content.

Since inception, we have produced and distributed 155 I Am Second films. e3 Partners has established relationships with vendors who assist us in delivering the highest quality product with attention to detail so often missing from online content. Additionally, e3 Partners has developed a 30-page document outlining best practices in producing I Am Second films. In short, time and prolific creation has made us the best at what we do.

Since inception, e3 Partners has accomplished the following results:
• spurred the creation of churches across the globe
• placed residential missionaries in countries
• mobilized short-term missionaries on mission trips
• distributed pounds of emergency food relief
• distributed almost 200 I Am Second short films to audiences across the world
In the coming months and years, e3 Partners will expand our online presence through a virtual community that allows people to take action as they seek ways to live out their faith and put others first. We will also expand our virtual mission trips, which were created in response to COVID-19, and have proven to be an effective and sought-after tool for people looking to use their gifts in service of others across the globe.