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“Model Church” is a recitation-style gospel piece whose words come from a nineteenth-century poem, “The Model Church,” written by John H. Yates and published in the 1870s.
The piece is a story told in verse. Its narrator, a weary man, slips into a humble country church and finds there everything a church ought to be — not grand or fashionable, but warm, welcoming, and full of heartfelt worship and old familiar hymns. He comes away convinced he has found the “model church.” That gentle, sentimental message of plain and sincere faith gave the piece a lasting place in gospel singing.
The song entered the bluegrass repertoire by way of J.D. Crowe and was carried further by the Bluegrass Album Band, the all-star group whose recordings of traditional material reintroduced many such songs. Their version, heard here, appeared on the first of that influential series of albums.
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