Aubrey Sampson
10 min read ⭑
“Somewhere, you’re waiting for permission for something. Consider this your notice: You’re allowed to take up space.”
In Aubrey Sampson’s experience, many people are waiting for permission to do things God has already called them to do — whether that’s to lament, to step into their own, to shed shame or to lead boldly. That’s why she’s taken it upon herself to write and preach in a way that gives people that permission. In addition to co-pastoring Renewal Church in West Chicago with her husband, Kevin, she also leads the Chicagoland Women in Church Planting Network and hosts the “Together We Rise” podcast. Her books include “The Louder Song,” “What We Find in the Dark,” “Known,” the “Big Feelings Days” children’s book and more.
Below, she shares thoughts on her favorite tacos in West Chicago, the spiritual case for going to Disney World every year, typing as a form of prayer and the books and technology that have drawn her closer to Jesus over the years. She shared these words exclusively with Rapt — and we’re sharing them with you.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
Home is West Chicago, Illinois — a small, scrappy, majority-Latino city that I have loved and pastored for nearly a decade. If you want to find me, skip my bio and come to El Coco Loco on a Thursday night. Thursdays are dollar tacos and half-priced margarita night, which means Thursdays are non-negotiable.
We walk there as a family — my husband and three sons — that’s part of the ritual. We run into neighbors two tables over. Someone from church is picking up a to-go order. Kids from the high school are ordering tacos after a game. Service is average. Food is just fine. Bathrooms need some love. But it’s the heart of our town. That’s why I love it.
My bio says author, speaker, church planter — words that might sound like a platform. But El Coco Loco says neighborhood. And in a city where so many of our neighbors are immigrants, spending our Thursday dollars at a local, family-run spot is a small, delicious act of loyalty and maybe even an act of disruption — it’s a way of saying, “We’re for you, we’re not going anywhere, and we’re absolutely not going to let you go anywhere.” It’s communion with chips and salsa.
Frances Gunn; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
Confession: I write about the spiritual life, grief and lament for a living and I find God at Walt Disney World. I know. I know. It’s manufactured. It’s commercial. It’s a corporation selling wonder at a steep price. And yet every year, one of my sons and I make our pilgrimage to Orlando, and every year, something in me comes back to life.
Here’s the scene: it’s 9 p.m. at EPCOT, and we’ve been walking since the park opened. My feet ache. My son — who is taller than me now, who is becoming a man before my eyes — is standing beside me eating something ridiculous, and the fireworks start over the pond. And this kid, who at home communicates primarily in shrugs, lights up. We’re both lit up. For a whole week, there’s no sermon to write, no one who needs me to be Pastor Aubrey. I’m just his mom, and we’re just playing.
That’s the spiritual part: the play. Somewhere in adulthood, we start believing joy must be earned or justified. But delight is not a reward for suffering well; it’s a gift, and gifts can only be received. When my son and I ride the same ride twice in a row for no reason except that it’s fun, when we smell the theme park popcorn and buy ourselves matching T-shirts, I remember that God invented delight and delight is how we heal.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?
My kryptonite is people-pleasing. Pastoring is possibly the worst career choice for a people-pleaser since every single week involves disappointing someone. Someone’s unhappy with the sermon. Someone wishes we’d sing older songs or newer songs or fewer songs. Someone needed a call I didn’t make. And every one of those moments hits a tender place in me that whispers: If they’re disappointed, you’ve failed — not at a task but as a person.
So I over-function. I say yes when I mean no. I replay conversations at midnight. I draft apologies for things that don’t need apologizing for. I’ve caught myself shaping decisions — real leadership decisions — around the question “Who will be upset?” instead of “What is right?” That’s the exploitable part of this weakness: a leader who needs everyone’s approval can be steered by whoever withholds it loudest.
How do I confront it? Imperfectly. Here’s what’s helping: I’ve learned to ask whether I’m carrying responsibility or just carrying anxiety — they feel identical at 2 a.m., but they’re not. I let my husband, our team or a trusted friend reality-check me. And I preach to myself what I preach to the leaders I coach: You don’t need everyone’s permission to do what God has asked of you. Disappointing people isn’t the same as failing them.
I’d love to be rid of it forever. Until then, I’m practicing letting people be unhappy with me — and leading anyway.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I recently realized every book I’ve written is secretly about the same thing: permission. “The Louder Song” and “What We Find in the Dark” give people permission to lament — to grieve loudly in a culture that prefers tidy testimonies. “Known” gives permission to be fully seen. “Overcomer” gives permission to shed shame. Even my children’s book, “Big Feelings Days,” hands that permission to the littlest among us: Your big feelings are not too much. Apparently, I’ve spent five books telling people what no one may have told them: You’re allowed.
My current obsession is the source itself. I’m writing a new leadership book about permission culture (coming in 2027) — particularly for women in ministry and leadership, who spend staggering amounts of energy waiting for someone to authorize what God has already anointed. I coach and gather women in church planting, and I keep watching the same pattern: brilliant, called, capable leaders hovering at doorways God has already opened, asking, “Is it okay if I … ?”
The lightbulb moment was realizing I wasn’t just observing that pattern. I was living it — accommodating, apologizing, over-explaining my presence in rooms I’d been invited into. This book is me quitting that in public and inviting others to quit alongside me.
Why should it be your obsession too? Because somewhere, you’re waiting for permission for something. Consider this your notice: You’re allowed to take up space.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I pray with my keyboard. I don’t mean I type out prayers. I mean the typing is the praying. When I sit down to write, I’m rarely transcribing something I’ve already figured out. I’m making sense of my story in real time — my pain, my questions, what God might possibly be doing in the middle of it all — one keystroke at a time.
Writing is how I metabolize my life with God. The blank page is my prayer closet. And here’s how I know it’s God and not just me: the words on the screen keep knowing more than I do. I’ll be typing through some grief I can’t untangle, and a sentence will land that I did not plan and could not have outlined — and it will read less like something I wrote and more like something I received. I sit back from the keyboard and think, Oh. That’s what’s been true this whole time. My fingers found it before my mind did.
That, I’ve learned, is often the Spirit: the Comforter doing comfort at 40 words per minute. This is how my books on lament came to be. I didn’t write them because I’d resolved my pain and had wisdom to dispense. I wrote them to survive, and God met me mid-sentence. You don’t have to be a writer for this. Whatever your work is — that’s an altar. God is already there, inviting you to discover what you didn’t realize your soul already knows.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
I have a handful of practices that work like a braid: Scripture, journaling, silence and — the strand holding it all together in this season — weekly prayer with my prayer partner.
Every week, it’s the same rhythm. We bring each other the unedited version of our lives. Not the pastor version, not the author version. The real one. We talk, and then we pray — actually out loud, actually for each other, sometimes pausing in silence to listen for what God might be saying. And here’s what surprises me every time: God regularly speaks to me through her. I’ll have spent five days scribbling around a question in my journal, and she’ll pray one sentence that lands like lightning.
The other strands prepare the soil. Reading the Bible fills my ears with God’s actual vocabulary — I can’t recognize his voice in the silence if I don’t know how he talks. Journaling helps me notice what’s truly in my heart. Silence teaches me to stop performing long enough to listen. But the weekly prayer is where it all gets confirmed, spoken and witnessed.
Here’s the deeper why: I spend much of my life being spiritually responsible for people. This is the one hour when someone contends for me. Hearing God was never meant to be a solo sport. Sometimes his voice sounds suspiciously like a faithful friend who shows up every single week.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
1) “Prophetic Lament” by Soong-Chan Rah. This book found me before I wrote a single word about grief, and it rearranged my theology. Rah’s walk through Lamentations exposed how much American Christianity runs on triumphalism while Scripture makes generous, holy room for protest and tears. It gave me permission — there’s that word again — to take lament seriously as worship.
2) Propel Women Cohorts. Not a book — a room. Sitting in cohorts with other women leaders changed my reality in ways reading alone never could, because calling gets confirmed in community. If you’re a woman sensing a leadership nudge and wondering if you’re allowed (you are), find a cohort. Being seen by women who’ve gone ahead of you, or are in it with you, is a resource no library carries.
3) “Creativity, Inc.” by Ed Catmull. My surprise pick: a management book by the co-founder of Pixar. But nobody has taught me more about protecting fragile new ideas, building honest teams and trusting the messy middle of the creative process. I’ve applied it to sermon-writing, book-writing and church-planting alike. All truth is God’s truth — even when it arrives via Buzz Lightyear.
And because rules are meant for breaking, two more: anything Anne Lamott has ever written about writing and grace, and Fleming Rutledge’s “Advent,” which will ruin (read: gloriously deepen) your Decembers forever.
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?
I’m not a techno-skeptic; I’m a techno-realist. The same phone that takes my attention also carries three things that are genuinely forming my soul right now.
Lectio 365. Most mornings, before the day starts making demands, I put in earbuds and let this app walk me through ancient prayer rhythms — pause, rehearse Scripture, respond. What I love is that someone else does the leading. For 10 minutes, a kind voice guides mine. It feels less like using an app and more like being pastored.
Voxer. If you don’t know it, it’s essentially a walkie-talkie app. Friends leave voice messages you can hear whenever. My besties and I trade Voxes all week — half-formed prayers, vent sessions, sometimes just a sigh with a name attached. Between our weekly prayer times, Voxer keeps the thread unbroken. There’s something about hearing a friend’s actual voice pray for you while you’re folding laundry or driving that a text can never touch.
Google Docs. Unglamorous but true: shared docs are where ideas get built in community — sermon thoughts, book concepts, dreams for our city. A shared doc says, “your mind and mine, working on this together.” That’s a spiritual act.
The common denominator? None of this tech replaces presence — it extends it. The question I ask of any app: does this connect me to God and actual humans or just to my screen?
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
What’s stirring in me is bigger than a book — it’s a movement of permission.
Yes, I’m writing the leadership book I mentioned earlier, on permission culture and women’s leadership. But what’s awakening underneath is a larger dream: whole networks of women stepping into their God-given anointing and authority without waiting for a hall pass — planting churches, leading organizations, taking their rightful seats. Part of my work now is leading the Chicagoland Women in Church Planting Network, and I keep glimpsing what could happen if that got contagious. I want to spend my next season being for other women what I needed someone to be for me: the person who says, “God already said yes. Go.”
Can I tell you what’s going on in my heart as I lean in? Fear, honestly. Remember my kryptonite? Writing about lament made me the woman weeping with you in the dark — nobody argues with that. But writing about women’s authority means some people will be disappointed in me, even opposed to me. The recovering people-pleaser in me has already drafted the apologies. This book is costing me something the others didn’t.
But I can’t hand other women a permission slip I’m unwilling to use myself. So I’m dreaming big and shaking slightly, which I suspect is what faith usually feels like.
Expect more books, more gathered women, more troublemaking of the holiest kind. God’s not done — with me or with you.
What are you waiting for permission for (perhaps something God has already called you to do)? Lament and grieve? Heal and move on? Share the gospel? Give lavishly? Take a courageous step forward into your future? Whatever it is, consider allowing God’s Word to inform your decision — along with prayer and counsel from wise mentors.
“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him” (James 1:5, ESV).
Aubrey Sampson co-planted and co-pastors Renewal Church, a multiethnic congregation in West Chicago, Illinois, alongside her husband, Kevin. She leads the Chicagoland Women in Church Planting Network and serves with the Chicagoland Collective, a church multiplication initiative. Aubrey is the author of five books, including The Louder Song, What We Find in the Dark and the children’s book Big Feelings Days, with a new book on permission culture and women’s leadership on the way. A national speaker, she writes regularly on Substack and hosts a podcast called Together We Rise.