Rev. Hamilton is going to Washington. What will that mean for his church?
Rev. Hamilton is going to Washington. But how often will he come back? Kansans have reasons to wonder, having just booted Sen. Roger Marshall from office Tuesday, in part because of how absent he seemed from the state he represented. Few believed Marshall was rushing back on weekends to the one-bedroom hunting shack he kept in rural Stafford County. His million-dollar vacation home in Sarasota, Florida, seemed a more likely destination when he wasn’t in Washington. Even if Senator-elect Adam Hamilton, who defeated Marshall, wanted to spend his free time on a white-sand Florida beach, he has a practical reason to come home. He has a church to run — and not just any church, but the largest United Methodist congregation in the country, the Leawood-based Church of the Resurrection, with 25,000 members. And he intends to keep running it, at least part-time. Resurrection laid out Hamilton’s plans in a detailed announcement Wednesday. In the short term, Hamilton will attend Senate orientation in Washington, then take a previously planned two-week vacation with his wife, LaVon. He’ll return to the pulpit Nov. 29 and continue leading services through Christmas. “I can hardly wait to return to a regular preaching schedule for