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6/29/2012
Seth Franco
by Eric Crull
Sometimes you just like a person, you know? There's just something about them, personable and engaging. Seth Franco is like that.

We were in the lobby of the Comfort Inn on Friday morning and Seth walked by us. Now, we had played at a Christmas Outreach with Seth two years ago in Carlisle, PA. We were surprised that he even recognized us, but he came right up to us and started to talk to us as soon as he saw us.

"Who is Seth Franco," I can hear you saying. Well, first off, he is a powerful man of God who reaches many thousands of people with his message of perseverance and redemption. More importantly, Seth can spin a basketball on his finger like no one else I have ever met! Plus, he is the first white basketball player to play for the Harlem Globetrotters since World War II. How cool is that?

Here is his story on his website. Please read through it a little before you go on.

Now, this was a Christmas party that was specifically aimed at the unchurched in Carlisle, so there were hundreds of people there that maybe never were in a church any other day that year. So it definitely was not church as normal.

Seth was awesome, telling his story and encouraging people to look past their situation to God. He was also amazing and flawless in his tricks. He really made an impact on those kids there because he had been a professional athlete, which has great currency in our society.

So, he remembered that we had played boomwhackers before he went on (how cool is that?) and told us that a few weeks after the Outreach he had gotten an email from a mom who had also been there with her son. She said in her email that her husband had died earlier in the year and her son had come to the church specifically to see Seth do his basketball tricks. The last big thing this young man had done with his father had been to go to a Harlem Globetrotters game and he had wanted to watch Seth spin a basketball in a kind of remembrance of his dad.

Of course, Seth didn't know any of this when he had shown up that day, but he walked in and started talking to the young man and getting to know him. Then, in the course of his show, Seth picked him out of the crowd and had him come on stage and help Seth spin some basketballs.

Well, at the end of the show, Seth was supposed to sign all the basketballs he had used and the church was going to have a special give-away. Seth said as the kid was walking off-stage, he just called him back, kind of gave him a hug and handed one of the basketballs to him.

In the email, the mother told Seth he had no idea the impact his attention and kindness had made on her son, and how grateful she was. She said he hardly put the ball down the rest of the day and actually fell asleep that night holding it in his arms.

Seth told us that he would never forget that show because of that.

Well, we said how a lot of times when we pray before we get out of our truck at a performance, that God will remind us to never just be going through the motions. Even though it may be something as inconsequential as whacking plastic tubes, that what we are going into that building to do is important, that He had worked it out to get us there to minister to those people at that appointed time.

Seth set his coffee down right there on a table in the lobby and said, "I haven't prayed with anyone yet today, so let's pray that prayer right now!"

So we took a few minutes to dedicate our day and our actions right there in the lobby of the Comfort Inn in Huntington, with breakfast being served and people coming and going all around us.

We let him have one of blue Boomwhackers bags to put his basketballs in because he wasn't sure how he was going to carry all his stuff onto the Creation stage that morning. So if you ever see Seth perform from now on and he has his stuff in a blue mesh bag, you'll know the story of how he came to have that bag.

So God reminded us of His excellent plan, gave a strong example of a compassionate Christian and let us be of use in His kingdom, all before we even got out of the hotel on Friday.
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