The Church is unusual among Christian churches in having two different types of worship spaces, chapels and temples. Chapels are open to anyone, even if most people who participate are members. Temples are open only to members, and not even all members, but only those who have cleared hurdles of belief and commandment-following. Chapels are, at least potentially, at the center of community-building. We not only go to worship services there, but also to ward activities or activities run by organizations within the ward, like the Relief Society. There are even sometimes public-facing events in chapels, like blood drives or voting. In temples, by contrast, we largely do things “alone in one another’s presence,” to borrow a phrase from a BYU professor (who was advising us that movies didn’t make good settings for dates). Although there is a little more interaction in sealings and baptisms than endowments, for example, temples are far inferior to chapels as sites of building community.
As a heretic who’s on the outside of the temple, I still find a lot of value in the community-building possibilities of the Church. So I’m disappointed that since he’s taken office, President Nelson has shown himself to be far more interested in the church of the temple than the church of the chapel. For example, here’s something he said in Sheri Dew’s 2019 book about him: “The only buildings that are absolutely essential are temples. Stake centers and chapels are a luxury.” This was in the context of talking about making church more home-centered, so he might not have meant it to be quite as anti-chapel as it comes across here. But I’m still honestly struck in a bad way that he would refer to church buildings as a “luxury.”
To be fair, I can see why he might see less value in chapels. If his goal is to get people on the covenant path, only their baptism and confirmation take place in a chapel. After that, it’s all temple ordinances. Attending church in a supportive ward might be a nice to have, but it’s not going to make the difference in exaltation. President Nelson, like many of his fellow GAs, is also clearly deeply concerned with people’s loyalty to the Church. Chapel worship is all well and good in this area, as you’ll hear lots of rhetoric about how the Church is God’s one true organization, but the chapel doesn’t provide the opportunity like the temple endowment does for members to promise all that they have or ever will have to the Church. I can see how this makes the temple far better in President Nelson’s eyes.
And of course President Nelson isn’t just talk when it comes to valuing the temple over the chapel. He’s announced a huge number of temples, many of which have been started, and a few of which have even been completed. And on the chapel side, I was intrigued to see an analysis linked on the Mormon subreddit a few months ago, done by u/xanimyle, that shows the distribution of years the Church’s chapels were built. I’ve reproduced their graph below, and here’s a link to the original post.