Moody Bible Institute Pension Plan

Moody Bible Institute Pension Plan

The Moody Bible Institute Pension Plan was established in the mid-1960s to provide retirement income for employees of the Moody Bible Institute, the evangelical Christian educational and media organization founded by 19th-century evangelist Dwight L. Moody. Headquartered at the Institute's flagship Chicago campus on North LaSalle Boulevard, the plan operates as a church plan under federal law — a designation that exempts it from ERISA's funding, vesting, and fiduciary rules that govern corporate pension funds. Longtime CFO Greg Thornton oversaw the plan for decades before announcing his retirement; Maggie Martensen took over as CFO and Treasurer in January 2025. Institute President Dr. Mark Jobe subsequently announced his own departure effective June 2026, setting up a full leadership transition. The plan allocates across a diversified institutional portfolio that includes private equity, hedge funds, private credit, and real estate. Real estate exposure is unusually tangible for a pension fund of this scale: the plan holds a stake in the North Union redevelopment project, a multi-block mixed-use development on Chicago's Near North Side that is turning former Moody Bible Institute land into residential towers, retail space, and public plazas. The plan also participates in a broader alternative investment portfolio that operates alongside the Institute's own balance sheet. Direct property interests tied to the Institute's 820 North LaSalle Boulevard campus further blur the line between institutional investing and organizational asset management. Geographic concentration remains heavily weighted toward Chicago and the broader US Midwest. Team size and total plan assets are not publicly disclosed. Incoming CFO Maggie Martensen arrived in January 2025 as part of a leadership overhaul that also saw David Holsten, CEO of Mission Aviation Fellowship, elected to the Board of Trustees in December 2025. The Institute operates media and publishing divisions — Moody Radio and Moody Publishers — though neither feeds directly into the pension plan's asset base. Dr. Mark Jobe, the Institute's tenth president, announced in early 2026 that he would step down effective June 30, 2026, closing a chapter that included significant real estate monetization via the North Union project. The pension plan itself has not publicly filed a Form 5500, consistent with its church plan status. The church plan exemption is the defining structural feature here. Unlike ERISA-governed plans, the Moody Bible Institute Pension Plan is not required to disclose funding ratios, actuarial assumptions, or investment holdings to the Department of Labor. This shields both the plan's size and its portfolio composition from public scrutiny — a posture that is legally sound but opaque to outside evaluators. For an allocator or GP assessing this entity as a potential LP, the absence of public filings means underwriting must rely entirely on direct engagement with the Institute's treasury office or the plan's outsourced investment consultants, whose identities are not disclosed.