When I was young I could never understand the phrase, “...and the Gates of Hell will not prevail against my church.” The image it conjured up for me were these large Medeival gates being battered pay the spire of this inverted building in the air. It just didn’t make sense. It was like an epiphany. My problem was I was seeing both objects as being “passive”, physical entities. A church ain’t a building and the Gates of Hell ain’t a place.
Every other translation translates it correctly as "hades." Hades is simply the abode of the dead. (International Standard Bible Encyclopedia)
What Jesus was saying was that the kingdom He was going to establish would not cease with His death nor would the kingdom itself die.
We tend to make biblical interpretation more complicated than it really is.
Yes. Agreed. And I dare say your friend doesn’t need any church building or cleric to discover faith. (But visiting one of the a rotted- out churches can really turn a person/ seeker off)