Great insight! Er…alright, I feel better about not knowing this word when I first saw it. Thankfully, my church doesn’t seem to use it. Perhaps these more elaborate words are used to try to seem classier? Are we selling Christ, or how sophisticated our church is? Is it another symptom of needing to manufacture a culture to promote an in-ness?
(Full disclosure: my first run-in with this word is at the end of Final Fantasy 13, so everything I’m saying could be totally bunk. Caveat reader.)

I hail from a small-town nondenom, so we just called our possible narthexes the lobby, fellowship hall, and multipurpose room. Actually, we didn’t really have a lobby, more of an entrance.
The first time I heard the word “narthex” was in a Mark Lowry routine, I believe (I get good PK points for that, right?). I don’t remember whether he was making fun of it, or just mentioning it in passing, but it was rather confusing until I looked it up.

why did i always called it the north-ex??? weird.

Is it a try for some elegance or something else? Certainly the concrete tilt-up big box style churches filled with the results of effective marketing and popular business management principles cry out for something more elegant, but I think there is also a longing for a feeling of deeper spiritual/religious roots going around popular evangelical Christianity today. Narthex is a rather Medieval word loaded with connotations of a weightier Christianity, especially since it sounds cool and few people know what it means. I only know about the word from taking art history classes in college – even then I wouldn’t have been able to tell you where it was in the church with confidence. Still, it sounds cooler to say “I’ll meet you in the narthex” than “I’ll meet you in the lobby.” I mean, any building can have a lobby.
As for your wind chill digression… I have an aunt who thought marshmallows grew on trees until she was corrected in college. Though she may have known where the narthex was.

“(Full disclosure: my first run-in with this word is at the end of Final Fantasy 13, so everything I’m saying could be totally bunk. Caveat reader.)”
Matt: where is this in the game? I am 38 hours in and I have never heard anyone say that.

Technically the narthex should be at the west end of the church, since the altar should be at the eastern end, so the parishioners are sitting/standing facing east. Orthodox churches are still constructed this way, and Orthodox Christians place their icons at home so they can face east while they pray. Don’t ask me why; we just do it that way.

Everything sounds better in Latin – even if we have to coin the phrase (or make up the word).
Pax Nabisco – Peace through Oreos!

Jestrfyl – it’s Greek not Latin according to the OED. I’d never come across the word so this hasn’t caught on here in the UK. We just call our the entrance or foyer.

Orthodox Christians place their icons at home so they can face east while they pray. Don’t ask me why; we just do it that way.
The rising sun is a daily icon of Christ’s Resurrection; when we pray facing east, we remind ourselves of the true Source. At least that’s my understanding.

“Matt: where is this in the game? I am 38 hours in and I have never heard anyone say that.”
Spoiler-free response, as I doubt you’re there yet: very last room of Chapter 13. It is all white. When you save there I believe it is labeled as the “Narthex.”

Q: Why did no one ever challenge the use of this silly and pretentious word in the church in which I grew up (which had a blue roof, just to suggest the quality of the architecture)?
A: Because no one ever questioned anything! After all, the pastor and youth minister graduated from Bob Jones, so they must know architectural lingo.

There is, of course, quite a bit of ecclesiological significance to the term. This significance is obscured by the fact that almost all churches today allow anybody, baptized or not, into the main body of the church.
Captcha: tried smolders

“There is, of course, quite a bit of ecclesiological significance to the term.”
Yep, which is why it seems especially silly in contexts running as far away from such significance as possible.
I can pretty much guarantee that the powers that were in the church of my youth did not know their narthexes from a hole in the ground.
Still working through this — perhaps I should try smolders!
captcha: balmier He (love it!)

I was in a church that called the lobby “narthex” – in late 2001, terrorist scares going around, one of our church leaders asked his daughter to meet him in the “anthrax.”
We never let him live that one down.

I think that only Roman Catholics and Episcopalians (i.e. Anglicans if you’re not in the U.S.) should be allowed to use the word “narthex.” And then only if their church is basically laid out in the model of the old cathedrals. See the graphic which accompanies Stephie’s orig post.
At our Episcopal church, which has a very definite “cathedral like” floor plan, we actually don’t use the word at all. We call it the “gathering space” instead BTW, our gathering space features a labyrinth design on the floor, which means (I suppose) that we’re all really horrid pagans

The fundies drove me to Catholicism, and, thank God, I’ve never heard that silly word again, even in places like Paris where it might be architecturally appropriate.

I think that only Roman Catholics and Episcopalians (i.e. Anglicans if you’re not in the U.S.) should be allowed to use the word “narthex.”
Ahem

I don’t know anyone who calls the lobby “the narthex,” but I’m pretty sure I hate them, nonetheless.

I thought it was “windshield” too!

never understood the use of the word narthex either. IMHO: what a dumb word!