"Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another" might be the most quoted verse in men's ministry, and the most misunderstood.
Proverbs 27:17 gets stitched on coffee mugs and hung in gyms and slapped on conference T-shirts. The way it gets used, you would think it means something like "encourage each other, be a good influence, lift each other up."
Read the verse again. Iron sharpening iron is loud. It is hot. It throws sparks. It removes material. Both pieces of iron leave the encounter with less metal than they started with, but with an edge they did not have before.
That is what brotherhood actually does to a man. It removes something. It exposes something. It makes you finally have to say the thing you have been avoiding. Real sharpening is not comfortable. It is not therapeutic. It is friction with a purpose, applied by a man who is willing to do the same work in front of you.
If you have a "brotherhood" where nobody ever pushes back on you, where every conversation ends in mutual affirmation, where you walk away feeling great but having changed nothing, that is not iron sharpening iron. That is two pieces of wood softly bumping into each other.
Find men who are willing to look at you and say, "I think you are wrong about that, and here is why." Find men who will hear what you actually said and not what you wanted them to hear. Find men who will hold you to the thing you said you were going to do, even when you would prefer to forget you said it.
That is the verse. That is the brotherhood. That is what we are trying to build at the fire.
Bring an honest answer to the next gathering, and let it sharpen.