[cuban leaf]

The word for "church" used in Matthew 16 is ἐκκλησία. and it is used to mean, in the Bible: 1) a gathering of citizens called out from their homes into some public place, an assembly -a) an assembly of the people convened at the public place of the council for the purpose of deliberating -b) the assembly of the Israelites -c) any gathering or throng of men assembled by chance, tumultuously -d) in a Christian sense: --1) an assembly of Christians gathered for worship in a religious meeting --2) a company of Christian, or of those who, hoping for eternal salvation through Jesus Christ, observe their own religious rites, hold their own religious meetings, and manage their own affairs, according to regulations prescribed for the body for order's sake --3) those who anywhere, in a city, village, constitute such a company and are united into one body --4) the whole body of Christians scattered throughout the earth --5) the assembly of faithful Christians already dead and received into heaven

[Heart-Rest]

I have three Biblical Greek-English Dictionaries (including "Strong's"), and they all show "church" as one of the translations, and that is also obviously what the translators of most of the English Translations of the Bible chose to use as the most accurate, precise translation of that word in those references, as I stated in my original post.

(For an online example, check out this definition at    http://www.greek-dictionary.net/ekklēsia    which contains the following translation.)

Greek transliteration: ekklēsia
Transliteration (simplified): ekklesia
Strong's number: 1577
GK number: 1711
Frequency in New Testament: 114
Morphology of Biblical Greek tag: n-1a
Gloss: church, congregation, assembly; ...