No, he's not surprised. He quite well understands the corruption and lies the Catholic Church has inflicted. The Greek word you have been told translates to "church" is ekklesia. The Greek roots of that word are /ek, "out from and to" and /kaléō, "to call" – properly, people called out from the world and to God [http://biblehub.com/greek/1577.htm]
The Greek predecessor of the word "church" is kyriakē which means belonging to the Lord. It's used only once in scripture and that is in Revelation 1:10.
Undoubtedly the Holy Spirit understood the difference between ekklesia and kyriakē and did NOT use kyriakē when referring to the believers or where they assembled.
If you want to see who did use the Greek term kuriakê oikia which means “the house belonging to the lord” you can simply read up on the pagans who were speaking of "the house belonging to the lord" in reference to Mithra the “sun-god”. It's also not difficult to see how that corruption of the word ekklesia crept into the religion of Catholicism when you realize that Constantine was actual pagan with his god Mithra the "sun god". Ever wonder where all those sun bursts the Catholics use came from?
Those who truly want to know the truth can easily do some research to see how the Catholic Church incorporated paganism into their religion and corrupted what scripture really teaches.
Your degree, your qualifications?