It was fifth Sunday at Needmore Baptist church and Dr. I. B. Drywater  had shown up just like clockwork. 
He always seemed to drop by on  the fifth Sunday which came first each summer.  It was Sunday, July 31 and Dr. Drywater was seated right there on the front seat.  
He was affiliated somehow with the Baptist headquarters in Nashville.  Although Baptist headquarters never made any attempt to interfere with the business or activities of Needmore Church, they would have one of their men to visit each Baptist church in the area from time to time.  Needmore Baptist Church seemed to be assigned to Dr. Drywater and he came faithfully on the fifth-Sunday which came nearest to the middle of summer.    
As a courtesy, he was often asked to bring the message when he was there.
Pastor Jones was new and didn't know much about this tradition until the good doctor filled him in, so of course he invited him to preach that morning.   
The congregation all got a good drink of water between Sunday School and church because they knew they were in for some very dry preaching.  Uncle Silas Crabtree got two drinks while he was there, because he knew the preaching would be both long and dry. 
“I  love him in the Lord,”  Silas was overheard to say  “but he can jump off into the water from higher, dive down deeper, stay under longer, and come up drier than any preacher I have ever heard in my whole life.”
This Sunday morning he chose as his text Ezekiel 37:1-14: “The hand of the Lord was upon me, and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones, And caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley; and, lo, they were very dry.”
He preached in the same monotone for thirty minutes.  He placed great emphasis on just how dry those bones were, and said that was where we got the idea of something being as dry as a bone.  The longer he preached the drier those bones got. 
The whole congregation started to get mighty thirsty but time to get another drink was at least an hour away, so they fanned themselves with the funeral home  fans, and prayed for the service to end.  
God always hears and answers prayers but sometimes it seems He waits a long time to try our patience.
All the babies were fretful and mothers and grandmothers were checking them to see if they were dry, most of them seemed very dry. There seemed to be a shift in his line of thought and every head in the congregation turned toward him, except the twenty or thirty who were sound asleep. 
They became very hopeful that he was drawing toward the end of his dry preaching.  But not so, he was merely switching to another line of thought.  
He asked everyone to turn with him to Genesis 8:13: “And it came to pass in the six hundredth and first year, in the first month, the first day of the month, the waters were dried up from off the earth: and Noah removed the covering of the ark, and looked, and, behold, the face of the ground was dry.” 
Again, Doctor Drywater  placed emphasis on just how dry the ground was when the covering of the ark was removed, and so the good doctor  sailed himself onto the dry ground without further ado.   
Dr. Drywater must have noticed that well over half of the congregation was sound asleep because he said it looked like  he was not going to be able to get to the best part of the message that morning.  He asked the church to gather back into the building at three that afternoon because he wanted to finish the message by talking about how dry the ground was in the Red Sea when Moses led the people through it. 
It was sounding pretty bad until Pastor Jones thought on his feet, and announced that they couldn't come back that afternoon because of the baptismal service down at the creek.    
Uncle Silas almost messed up bad when he started to say we don't have anyone to...  But Sadie got him stopped just in time.  
The Spirit must have been moving because three longtime members spoke up almost in unison saying they would like to be baptized again that afternoon, said that cool creek water sounded mighty good to them.  Doctor Drywater announced that that he would come back the following Sunday to finish his message.   
God blesses His church in spite of those of us who preach, and sometimes through those of us who do some dry preaching.. grin.