(RNS) — Thirty-six years ago, the Rev. Adam Hamilton co-founded a church with a handful of people in a funeral home chapel. Now, that congregation is the largest United Methodist church in the nation, and Hamilton is setting his sights on a new venue: the United States Congress. Hamilton, 61, announced his run for U.S. Senate on Thursday morning (April 30) in a press conference in Prairie Village, the suburban city he was raised in. Describing himself as an “independent-minded Democrat,” he emphasized his church’s community building and charity work and said his decades in ministry prepared him to be a bridge-builder in Congress. “In a world that feels more and more divided, I’ve had the privilege of being a pastor for 36 years of a church that’s roughly equally divided between Republicans, Democrats and independents,” said Hamilton at the press conference.…