The sound of the gavel opening the Republican National Convention on July 31, 2000 was not really the sound of the gavel. When doing sound tests, the audio engineer for the convention discovered that the noise the gavel actually made was not impressive enough to fill the huge hall in Philadelphia, so he pre-recorded an "ideal gavel sound" that was played over the loudspeakers when the moderator struck the desk with the stand-in gavel. The gavel served as a switch to trigger an "electronically reproduced gavel pulse."

All of us need help to fill our own halls with a faithful witness for Christ. Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will be our Loudspeaker if we will speak faithfully for him.