A Message From the Chaplain
Greetings Beloved Ones, my name is John Saraka, for the past 10 years I have served as the pastor at Zion Lutheran Church in Staten Island, NY, and I am entering into my 30th year of ordained ministry. I am excited to be able to return to the Lutheran Gathering at Silver Bay this year with my family, Shannon, my partner of 21 years, and our 8-year-old son, Abraham. Although we have only been a part of this special place for one year, we realized how amazing an experience the Lutheran Gathering is, and we are delighted to return.
This year, I have the honor of serving as the worship leader/chaplain for this year’s gathering at Silver Bay. Our theme is Hope in our Time, in an age of anxiety, and over my lifetime I have realized how grounding and beneficial my worship life has been to my life, as Paul writes it is where I find, ‘a peace that surpasses all understanding’. The biblical story comes to life for us in worship as the Spirit provides a foundation of faith that helps us to navigate a challenging world with hope, courage, and love.
Through song, meditation, prayer, and a variety of spiritual practices, we will gather to find strength and connection with each other through God, as the communal aspect of worship helps us remember we are never alone. You add that we get to do this in one of the most beautiful settings in all of New York State at Silver Bay on Lake George, and this empowers us to look forward to a renewing, relaxing, and invigorating time together. I look forward to seeing some familiar faces while meeting new people this year as we gather at Silver Bay. Til then, blessings to you all.
2026 Faculty
Chaplain - Pastor John Saraka
Faculty - Pastor Lena Warren
Faculty - Pastor Dustin Wright
Music Director - Joe Krupa
Teen Leader - Marret Arfsten
Planning Committee
Dean - Pastor Arden Strasser
Director - Chad Volkert
Registrar - Sarah Hoffman
Activities Leader - Scott Rohrbach
Program Team - Pastor Marie Jerge, Laura Hill-Primiano
Finance - Beth Smayda
Communications Team - Katie Bang, Sue Hollar
Punkee Editor - Patti Garrison
Adult Learning
Pastor Lena Warren
Sustaining Hope in a Time of Hopelessness
Skipping our way through a lot of bits and pieces scriptures, and adding some contemporary resources as guides, we’re going to spend the week exploring what faith is, how do we feed it so that it is healthy, and how do we exercise it. At the end of the week, we will talk about hope that exists beyond hope, when everything really falls apart.
Day 1: Hope … it’s a thing with feathers?
Day 2: Feeding hope: eating for relief
Day 3: Feeding hope: eating for strength
Day 4: Strengthening hope: is hope and action word?
Day 5: When all is lost: Hope beyond hope
Pastor Dustin Wright
The Upswing: The Story of the Christians Who Rebuilt America and How We Can Do It Again
​It was a time of rabid inequality, a viciously divided population and endemic poverty... you know, the First Gilded Age of the late 1800s and early 1900s!
This year at the Lutheran Summer Gathering, join Pastor Dustin Wright for a week-long series looking at Christians who worked together across racial and denominational lines to respond to a time of crisis and built a more equitable society from the 1890s through the 1960s, something historians have called "the social gospel movement." Each day, after grounding ourselves in Scripture we will trace how the social gospel strengthened American social cohesion as measured by economic equality, political compromise, a stronger social fabric and a growing culture of solidarity. We will also look at how the social gospel movement’s inability to transcend racism and sexism during this period in part led us to our current time of crisis, a Second Gilded Age.
