Pass rush to preacher: South Carolina’s Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy knows his future
A few months after he transferred from Texas A&M to South Carolina, Gabriel Brownlow-Dindy went to train in Florida, like so many college football players.
In any setting, Brownlow-Dindy looks like a man carved from stone. He is 6-foot-3 and 315 pounds of what looks like pure muscle. His physique is still obvious on this early July day in the Sunshine State. He is wearing a white button-down dress shirt with a bolo tie, standing in front of a lectern, embarking on a real-world practice session for his future.
“The sermon being: Dear younger me,” Brownlow-Dindy says, looking down at his notes. “Trust in God’s timing. … You think about that, and you say, ‘Sometimes, me and God’s timing does not align.’ Life is full of unexpected seasons. Instead of striving to control, trust in God’s plan. Find peace in timing.”
He continues: “Because no matter what you think or how you look at it, we’re gonna be on God’s timing regardless. So you might as well go with the flow.”
That’s how Brownlow-Dindy began a nearly 37-minute sermon in front of the congregation at the Stuart Church of Christ in Stuart, Florida. Whenever football ends for South Carolina’s redshirt junior defensive tackle, he plans on following in his father’s path and becoming a preacher.
Brownlow-Dindy will return to Texas A&M on Saturday, back to the school to which he committed as a five-star defensive tackle (No. 17 player nationally) in 2022 — a part of the Aggies’ historic recruiting class (they signed eight five-stars). He will also be returning to his parents.
Coincidentally, before his son committed to Texas A&M, Terrance Brownlow-Dindy was already in the midst of moving out of Florida and forming the Texas School of Preaching in College Station. So let’s just say that Gabriel has worked extra hard trying to secure tickets for Saturday’s game.
But just as College Station is a reminder of one of those “unexpected seasons” — he arrived to Texas A&M recovering from an injury, fell on the depth chart and wasn’t able to regain his footing, which led him to the transfer portal — it’s also a reminder of what could be next in God’s timing.
At South Carolina this season, Brownlow-Dindy, who’s battled injures, has tallied 18 tackles while grading out as the Gamecocks’ top defender, per Pro Football Focus. The hope is that the NFL comes calling. Yet he already has his post-football plan: Enrolling in the two-year program at the Texas School of Preaching, which will certainly be more intense than his current schooling.
“Our students are not allowed to have a secular job while they’re here,” Terrance said. “They’re in the classroom for eight hours a day. After that eight hours, they have to go home and, if they’re gonna be really successful, probably devote themselves to three more hours of study.”
Added Gabriel: “They fit four years into two. It’s pretty rigorous, but you come out a different person.”
An early start
At some point in each of their lives, Terrance thought all four of his kids were set on making a future of preaching. Then life happens. They find other interests, other career paths. His oldest son wanted to be a preacher at some point. Then he wanted to be an engineer. Now he’s in flight school working to be a pilot. He desires change.
“He set his mind on preaching the gospel when he was about 5 years old,” Terrance said of Gabriel. “That’s the only thing he’s ever said he wanted to do. He’s never changed course.”
You must know: Gabriel and his siblings were not just around preaching and religion. They were immersed in it. Terrance is explaining this, prefacing his parenting by quoting Deuteronomy 6:4-9, in which God, through Moses, tells the Israelites before they cross into Canaan to impart God’s word to their children.
“We took that seriously,” Terrance said.
The Brownlow-Dindy children were home-schooled, which meant that before their mom would teach secular subjects, they’d jump straight into a lesson on God’s word.
Or, rather, Terrance was able to give his own children a sermon every morning. But not just a sermon. No, he wanted to give them sermon pointers and sermon starters — essentially teaching them how to deliver a sermon, so that they could be equipped to be a disciple of Christ, to spread the word in all types of environments.
And, as any good preacher knows, the key to reaching someone goes beyond reciting stories from the Bible. It requires engaging with them … especially if they’re in elementary school.
One assignment Terrance and his wife, Shenia, gave their children: Take a passage of scripture that they studied and formulate a sermon outline that they would then have to present in front of their family.
“We would critique it and show them maybe some things they could’ve done better, what they did well,” Terrance said. “If you want a kid to learn something, put it in a game. We did lots of that. Lots of Bible Bowls, lots of Bible trivia.”
That was much of the foundation for how Gabriel crafts sermons when different churches or pastors ask him to be a guest preacher, which he’s now done a number of times.
He starts with a message or a verse from the Bible and begins formulating an outline, almost bullet-pointing things he wants to talk about. From there, he’s able to weave it all together, sometimes pulling in other verses to better deliver his message.
“Then you start using your life — things you’ve been through in your life that you can kind of relate to people,” Gabriel said. “You want to relate to different people, so I’m not just talking.”
Which brings us back to that church in Florida this past July, when a man with a Herculean physique and a bolo tie, who was a month away from beginning preseason practice at his second SEC school, spoke for nearly half an hour, spreading the word of God and prepping for his future.
“If I could write to my younger self,” the preacher says. “I would tell him over and over: Trust God’s timing.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2025 at 7:00 AM.
