By Derrick Brown (follow on Twitter @dbrowndbrown)
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Reaching Out (Iron Men 10-5-2025) (822 Words)
By Derrick Brown (Join Our Mailing List!)
There is a reason I call our monthly men’s small group “my favorite class.”
It is the one place where teaching feels like breathing.
Every first Sunday, we “pull up” into a big “couch circle.”
Our group is a precarious mix of pre-teen and teen boys ... that calls itself Iron Men.
The name fits … iron sharpens iron … but not without friction, patience … and a little heat.
Our pastor’s sermon this morning was about simple, interpersonal evangelism ... “sharing your faith through options and research,” he said … “can be done simply … and with care, concern, and respect.”
But simplicity is complicated … when your audience is twelve-to-sixteen-year-old boys … who may be thinking about “NFL” kickoffs … more than “spiritual” kickoffs.
I know … because I used to be one of them.
So I started our circle with a question … “What is the climate like at your school? How do students treat each other?”
That question opened the floodgates.
AB went first. “It is mean,” he said flatly. “Everybody is just mean.”
I told him that I knew that school ... because I had helped start a high school nearby … years ago. Lots of our high school students came from his middle school.
Millions of dollars had been poured into that neighborhood to bring light and hope.
“The first step,” I told him, “is admitting the truth about what a place has been. Healing starts with naming the hurt.”
Then we talked about “crooked paths” ... the winding roads we travel toward patience along pathways paved with hope and peace … the ones that rarely go straight … but somehow get us where we are supposed to go.
The brothers TS1 and TS2 shared that their school has a strong Fellowship of Christian Athletes group. “Good,” I told them. “Community keeps you from standing alone.”
KL said his public charter school had the same “mean-spirited” feel.
That opened a story about the school that used to occupy his building ... a story of closure, transition, and generational pain.
Sometimes, I told him, the spirit of a place lingers. Prayer can unearth and heal what’s buried.
RM jumped in next: “We have a lot of brain rot.”
He explained the viral “6-7” meme ... a phrase that’s spread through TikTok and classrooms like wildfire. “That’s brain rot,” he said. “Nobody thinks for themselves anymore.”
Then he asked, “What is a public charter school?”
That question hit deeper than he knew.
I told him it is a public school that can innovate ... but only as long as enrollment and funding last.
I told him that I helped start one that had to close.
I did not linger with his question for long, but I could feel the lesson surfacing …
Good intentions do not guarantee sustainability.
Vision alone will not “keep the lights on.”
ZL spoke up about his old school’s leadership problems.
CG, the final speaker, described his private school’s Foundations of Christian Thought course.
The contrast was striking ... yet it didn’t divide us.
It deepened the conversation.
For a moment, I just listened.
These boys ... usually quiet, guarded, half-present ... were opening up.
Their honesty was the sermon I did not know we would preach.
So I pulled up a photo on the Smart TV ... of a Chipotle burrito bowl.
“This,” I said, “is why … how … and where I have had separate, similar, recent encounters with two former students who each brought some ‘turbulence’ into my classroom.”
They leaned in.
I told them about Final Exams (At Chipotle) ... and how those encounters turned past classroom tension into mutual respect.
How each of us, in our own way, had clothed our hearts with humility, grace, and patience.
I told them that faith conversations can happen anywhere ... a fast-food counter, a hallway, a lunch table ... if we show up willing to listen more than we talk.
Then AB1 prayed to close our meeting.
His voice was calm, ready, and steady.
He prayed for all of us ... that we would keep walking our “crooked paths” with peace.
That is when I felt it … the Spirit that moves quietly between brokenness and belonging.
After the “Amen”
Driving home, I thought about what had just happened.
We did not solve the problem of “mean schools” or “brain rot.”
But we modeled something even more precious and rare ... an honest circle.
In classrooms, churches, and homes, the work is the same … teaching without
talking too much.
Making simplicity feel like wisdom, not reduction.
Faith does not always spread by argument, research, or strategic maneuvering.
Sometimes it travels by atmosphere ... by the peace people sense when you are not trying to “win” … but to understand.
That is the real “Iron Man” test.
Not memorizing verses.
Not debating doctrine.
But walking the “crooked path” with others, showing that patience and “meekness” is not “weakness” ... it is “controlled strength” … and born(e) witness.
One Sunday … one conversation … one prayer at a time.
Selah.
(The "Follow The Leader (changED - Volume 2)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
(The "changED (Volume 1)" Audio and Video Album / Mixtape is also available at TeachersPayTeachers.com)
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I am a “standup storyteller.”
I fuse rap, spoken word (poetry), oration (traditional public speaking), singing, and teaching into messages of hope, healing, and change that I write, direct, and produce to help people who help people.
Everything must change - and stay changED.
Tradition begins and ends with change.
Change begins with me and the renewing of my mind ... then continues through efforts to effect small-group discipleship (equipping others to equip others) with audiences that respect and embrace mentoring, mediation, and problem solving as tools of change.
I am the product of my mentoring relationships, peacemaking (and peacekeeping), and problem-solving ability.
My education began when I finished school.
After school, I enrolled in a lifelong curriculum that includes classes in ministry, entrepreneurship, stewardship, literacy, numeracy, language, self-identity, self-expression, and analysis / synthesis.
My projects execute a ministry that has evolved from wisdom earned through lessons learned.
I want to share this wisdom to build teams of "triple threat" fellows - mentors, mediators, and problem solvers.
We will collaborate in simple, powerful ways that allow us to help people who help people.
I now know that power is work done efficiently (with wise and skillful use of resources, interests, communication, and expertise).
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