The founding pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the country is launching a bid for the United States Senate in Kansas.

Adam Hamilton, a fifth-generation Kansan and the founding pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Johnson County, which is largest United Methodist church in the United States, Thursday announced his candidacy for the United States Senate pledging to be a leader who listens to Kansans and brings people together to solve problems.

According to the campaign, Hamilton’s announcement caps a months-long listening tour that took him to 18 communities across Kansas, where farmers, ranchers, small-business owners, and families described the squeeze of rising costs and the many ways that political dysfunction in Washington is hurting Kansans.

As the founding pastor of Church of the Resurrection, Hamilton has spent his life listening, and bringing people together. The church’s membership is roughly equal parts Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, a rarity in a world that is so often deeply polarized.

“I’m an independent-minded Democrat, dedicated to leading from the center,” Hamilton said. “It will take leaders in our country who put service above self, country before party, and people before politics.”

On his listening tour, Hamilton said, the same concerns came up across every region of the state: gasoline up 40 percent in the last year, diesel up 40 percent since February, and 70 percent of farmers reporting they could not afford all the fertilizer they needed this season. The American Farm Bureau reports 58 percent of farmers are experiencing worsening financial conditions. Families earning ordinary incomes told him they are being priced out of health insurance, and rural Kansans worry about losing access to care altogether.

“Most of these are self-inflicted wounds,” Hamilton said. “Government is not meant to solve all of our problems, but decisions in Washington are not meant to make them worse. We need politicians who will actually listen to their constituents, who care about the needs of ordinary people, and who are working together to solve problems rather than making them worse.”

Hamilton closed his announcement by calling on Kansans to imagine and fight for a different kind of politics: “a future where Republicans, Democrats, and independents work together to actually solve problems, and where mutual respect is our common language and hope is our shared anthem.”