Who is Eric Ludy?
Eric Ludy is the president of Ellerslie Mission Society and the bestselling author of a dozen books on Christian thought and living. Ludy functions as the director of Ellerslie Training in Windsor, Colorado and serves as the teaching pastor at Ellerslie’s campus church.
Eric Ludy was born in Hinsdale, Illinois, December 17th of 1970 to Winston and Barbara Ludy, a strong Christian couple who highly valued the Scriptures and were hungry to live out an authentic Christian life. His parent’s convictions proved a strong influence upon his young soul, and Ludy yielded his life to the Person of Jesus at the age of five while sitting on his mother’s lap. Ludy grew up exposed to many differing denominational perspectives within the Christian church tradition but never proved either hungry for spiritual matter or thirsty for greater understanding of the Kingdom of his Lord throughout his pre-college years.
His mother and sister believed strongly in the power of prayer and wielded their confidences in the direction of God winning over Ludy’s young soul. The effect was quite dramatic. For though he had never showed much of a spiritual spark of givenness to the great Gospel commission since his commitment at the age of five, in his Whitworth College dorm room on February 2nd, 1990, Ludy encountered God Almighty and was forever altered. “My new life began that day!” Ludy declares. It was after reading the book, No Compromise – the Life Story of Keith Green, that everything seemed to suddenly click, and Ludy found himself on his knees before the Living God letting go of life as he had always known it. “From that day,” Ludy says, “I have been all about Jesus Christ.”
Marriage
Eric Ludy’s name rarely is said without mention of his wife, Leslie. The two names have been jointly representative of purity, beauty, and excellence in marriage since their inspiring pre-marriage relationship culminated in covenant vows in December of 1994. As artistically detailed in their book, When Dreams Come True, the Ludy’s unique love story caught the fancy of an on-looking world in the mid-nineties. Their moral and ethical value system literally shocked and inspired hundreds of thousands, and their choice to save their first kiss until their wedding day dropped the jaw of sin-saturated America. And whereas, the Ludy love story was known by many in the mid-nineties, the Ludy’s intimate connectivity with the topic of purity and Godly relationships really took off in 1998 when their collaborative work When God Writes Your Love Story was published and spent 18 months on the bestsellers list and continues to be one of the top-selling Christian relationship books of all time.
Family
Eric Ludy has four children with his wife, Leslie. Hudson, his first born, arrived December of 2004 (just after their ten year anniversary celebration) and this began a beautiful new season in Ludy’s life and a great expansion to his message. After a painful miscarriage in 2006, God unfolded a dramatic story of adoption, bringing a little five month old Korean girl named Harper to the Ludy home in July of 2007, her arrival coinciding almost perfectly with the expected due date of the previously miscarried life. In 2008, the Ludy’s adopted again, but this time a boy – Kipling. And while they were in the hospital picking up their brand new little baby, Leslie found out that she was pregnant. Seven months later, Avonlea was born on father’s day in June of 2009.
His Message
There are four key passion points that hallmark Eric Ludy’s ministry and message:
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The Word of God – Ludy believes that it is central, sufficient, without blemish, right on all points, true in all its precepts, and, in truth and without equivocation, the Word of God.
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The Gospel of The Kingdom – Ludy believes the Gospel is more than just Divine forgiveness. He holds strongly to the idea that it is life transformation. It puts Jesus where He must be for the human life to work – at the helm.
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Honor – Ludy defines Honor as the behavior of heaven come to earth. It’s men being men and women being women. It’s nobility returned to the sons and daughters of the King of Kings.
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Intercession – Ludy describes intercession as one being made strong to be poured out – one becoming a gap-filler for the vulnerable, a rescuer of the weak.
His Denomination
When Eric Ludy is asked about his denominational leanings, he very simply says, “Just stick Leonard Ravenhill, C.T. Studd, Hudson Taylor, Rees Howells, and Charles Spurgeon into a blender, and that’s pretty close to what I believe.” Ludy is a “deeper life” advocate, a strong proponent of the supremacy of Christ and of the sufficiency of the Word of God.
The following is the dedication in the front of his Ellerslie Training Curriculum:
I have found spiritual gold in many different places throughout my life. Outside of my dear parents and Leslie’s parents, there are twenty-six greats (from the past two centuries) that have most influenced my Christian thinking and living in our modern times. And since their thoughts are found speckled throughout these notes, I wish to honor them here, as a reminder to all the students gleaning wisdom from this training, that the strongest Christian leaders are but a consecrated quotation of the giants of faith that have proceeded him – C.T. Studd, Hudson Taylor, George Muller, Rees Howells, AW Tozer, William Booth, Amy Carmichael, Richard Wurmbrand, Leonard Ravenhill, Paris Reidhead, Corrie Ten Boom, George Whitefield, John Wesley, David Brainerd, Charles Spurgeon, EM Bounds, John Hyde, Jim and Elizabeth Elliot, Keith Green, Jackie Pullinger, DL Moody, Major Ian Thomas, Gladys Aylward, David Wilkerson, and Oswald Chambers. I dearly desire my life to be a quotation of such an audacious band of mighties.
Past Ministry
In 1995, when Eric Ludy’s first book was published, he was 24 years old. When this first manuscript began to permeate the Church’s awareness back in the mid-nineties, it led to invites all across the globe to speak and train. For the next ten years, Eric and Leslie traveled extensively around the world passionately training the younger generation in what they referred to as the “set-apart life,” one wholly consecrated unto Jesus Christ. Ludy pulled back in his travels in 2005 and began to focus more time on getting the messages in print that were burdening his soul. From 2005 to 2008, Eric, and his wife Leslie, churned out eleven published books, which were to lay the foundation for their ministry work today. Ludy considers his works, The Bravehearted Gospel and Wrestling Prayer, as his two most important messages. In these two books (which are his two latest), a new voice emerged in his writing. It was a stronger, more forceful eloquence in defense of the wholly consecrated life, the unchanging nature of the Word of God, and the integrity of the Gospel message in its entirety. In 2006, Ludy began development of the curriculum now currently utilized as the core training in the Ellerslie semester-long training. To prepare this material and to hone it, Ludy hosted a discipleship training in his home for three years for a small group of 10-15 students. For years, Ludy spoke in front of thousands, but the transition to a small group proved supremely important in his development as a leader and in his preparation for leading the discipleship training process at Ellerslie. In 2009 when he took the helm at Ellerslie Mission Society, Ludy and his wife had written a combined 18 published books that had sold well over a million copies and been translated into over a dozen languages around the world. Leveraging this base of support, Ellerslie Training has found tremendous success and has garnered a worldwide following and student base, with their websites showing hospitality to over 1,000,000 visitors a year and their school providing in-depth discipleship to over 150 students a year.
Currently
Eric Ludy can be found daily training students in the Gospel life at Ellerslie Training in Windsor, Colorado, and can be found preaching weekly at Ellerslie’s campus church. Ludy is widely sought after as a forceful advocate for the Gospel, and, throughout the calendar year can be found speaking at various venues about the world. Ludy, a very passionate communicator, quips that he once used to keep his audiences listening by the sheer force of his sense of humor, and now he does it through shock and awe. “I used to be so likable in my delivery style,” says Ludy, “But now I’m like a freight train rumbling through a small sleepy town early on a Saturday morning.” For a quick taste of Ludy’s thunderous communication style that has garnered him both deep loyalties and the deep antipathies amongst his hearers, watch one of the following:
The Gospel Depraved Indifference Intercession
Book Writing Chronology
Harvest House Publishers
2009 – Wrestling Prayer (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
2009 – The Lost Art of True Beauty (by Leslie Ludy)
2008 – Sacred Singleness (by Leslie Ludy)
2008 – Answering the Guy Questions (by Leslie Ludy)
2007 – The Bravehearted Gospel (by Eric Ludy)
2007 – Set-Apart Femininity (by Leslie Ludy)
2006 – A Perfect Wedding (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
Thomas Nelson Publishers
2007 – Meet Mr. Smith (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
2006 – The First 90 Days of Marriage (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
2005 – Teaching True Love (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
Multnomah Publishers
2007 – Authentic Beauty – Study Guide (by Leslie Ludy)
2004 – When God Writes Your Life Story (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
2003 – God’s Gift to Women (by Eric Ludy)
2002 – Authentic Beauty (by Leslie Ludy)
2000 – When Dreams Come True (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
1998 – When God Writes Your Love Story (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
1995 – His Perfect Faithfulness (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
1996 – Romance God’s Way (by Eric and Leslie Ludy)
Future Book?
Ludy hasn’t picked up the pen to write a book since November of 2008, but believes that future books are inevitable. “When you love Truth, books just form inside you,” he explains, “and when they finally turn into heart-geysers, then you know its time to sit down and get it all out.” So, no, there currently aren’t any books in the publishing pipeline, but there is the expectation of many more books to come.
You can learn more about Eric Ludy at Ellerslie
Standing For God 