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BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Mark Kinzer is Moderator of Yachad BeYeshua, an international interconfessional fellowship of Jewish disciples of Yeshua, and Senior Scholar and President Emeritus of Messianic Jewish Theological Institute, a graduate school preparing leaders for service in the Messianic Jewish movement. 

 

Dr. Kinzer received his PhD in Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan (1995), and his rabbinical ordination from the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (2001). He is author of Besorah: The Resurrection of Jerusalem and the Healing of a Fractured Gospel (Cascade, 2021; co-author, Russell L. Resnik), Jerusalem Crucified, Jerusalem Risen: The Resurrected Messiah, the Jewish People, and the Land of Promise (Cascade, 2018), Postmissionary Messianic Judaism: Redefining Christian Engagement with the Jewish People (Brazos, 2005), Israel’s Messiah and the People of God: A Vision for Messianic Jewish Covenant Fidelity (Cascade, 2011), and Searching Her Own Mystery: Nostra Aetate, the Jewish People, and the Identity of the Church (Cascade, 2015).

Dr. Kinzer served on the Theology Committee of the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC), and was a member of the subcommittees which drafted the UMJC’s Defining Messianic Judaism document (2005) and the revised UMJC Statement of Faith (2012).

 

One of the founders in 1997 of Hashivenu, a forum for advancing theological discussion in the Messianic Jewish movement, Dr. Kinzer has served as its Chair since 2000.

 

Dr. Kinzer was one of the founding rabbis of the Messianic Jewish Rabbinical Council (MJRC), and as the first Chair of the MJRC Faith and Halakhic Standards Committee edited the original version of the MJRC Standards of Observance. 

 

Richard Mouw, former President of Fuller Theological Seminary, has called Dr. Kinzer “a breakthrough thinker who has taken Messianic Judaism to a new level of theological sophistication.” R. Kendall Soulen of Wesley Theological Seminary states that Dr. Kinzer is “widely regarded as the [Messianic Jewish] movement’s foremost theologian.”

 

Dr. Kinzer lives with his wife, Roslyn, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he also serves as Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Zera Avraham, a Messianic Jewish synagogue which he founded in 1993.

 

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