  This is the first of a series of two papers on the perturbative computation
of the ghost and gluon propagators in SU(3) Lattice Gauge Theory. Our final aim
is to eventually compare with results from lattice simulations in order to
enlight the genuinely non-perturbative content of the latter. By means of
Numerical Stochastic Perturbation Theory we compute the ghost propagator in
Landau gauge up to three loops. We present results in the infinite volume and
$a \to 0$ limits, based on a general strategy that we discuss in detail.
