From a living-room prayer gathering in Río Piedras to Cleveland’s west side and a new home in Brooklyn, this is the story of a church that kept choosing faith, family, service, and an open door.
In the closing days of 1976, a Wednesday prayer gathering in Río Piedras became the beginning of a church. The congregation would become Iglesia Pentecostal Misionera Filadelfia, a name rooted in brotherly love and perseverance.
Rev. Luis R. Vizcarrondo Sr. planted the Cleveland congregation in 1987. For more than twenty-five years, the church worshiped in rented spaces, borrowed rooms, and temporary facilities across Cleveland’s west side while a faithful core kept gathering.
In 2013, after decades of renting and relocating, the congregation acquired its building on Broadview Road in Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn neighborhood. Families finally had a permanent address they could call their church.
Rev. Dr. Luis R. Vizcarrondo Sr. entrusted leadership to Luis R. Vizcarrondo Jr. and Rev. Sarah Vizcarrondo. The congregation embraced the name Refine Church, drawing on the biblical image of the refiner in Malachi 3:3.
When the pandemic disrupted ordinary church life, volunteers loaded food and supplies into vehicles and delivered help to families across Old Brooklyn. Ministry moved beyond a building and into the neighborhood.
After years of anonymous hate mail and repeated break-ins in 2023, another attempted break-in in January 2024 reinforced the congregation’s conclusion that it was no longer safe to remain at Broadview Road. The location would change again. The mission would not.
In March 2024, Brooklyn United Church of Christ donated its 1.5-acre Memphis Avenue campus to Refine Church and Project Exartizo. Some longtime members remained, worshiping in familiar pews beside a congregation carrying a different language and the same desire to make sacred space serve people.
Today, Refine is a bilingual, multicultural congregation worshiping and serving from 8720 Memphis Avenue. The story that began in Puerto Rico, crossed into Cleveland, and found a new home in Brooklyn continues through every person who worships, serves, learns, gives, or simply walks through the doors.
Come see what God is writing now
The Memphis Avenue building has carried more than one community’s prayers. Use the buttons to move between an earlier generation and Refine today.
“The mission has not changed. Only the language has.”
Nuestra Herencia
Come worship. Ask questions. Bring your family. Serve beside us. Your first Sunday could become part of a story none of us can see yet.