Did you not have tea and coffee in the hall after? That was how it worked at mine.
I felt the exact same way growing up. But that's the thing: while I hated church my parents/grandparents got really involved. It wasn't unusual for my grandparents to meet up with friends after Church at some buffet and talk, and my grandmother was involved in a few non-sunday service activities. My mother met a few friend in the area through church and sang on the choir.
I don't know if they were outliers, but the key here was 1) meeting people in the area (my mom moved constantly and church was one of the first things she joins) and 2) having an easy excuse to do something after church on Sunday. I struggle to do monthly rituals with friends nearby and meanwhile two generations of family could do weekly luncheons after participation in a place that was fine with bringing kids into.
I should note that this might still be a division of the genders, though. My Grandfather didn't do much more than drop off/pick up my grandmother.
Certainly there were people who were more involved -- the church had a youth group, for one thing, and a bunch of outreach programs. But those were the kind of things that you had to specifically seek out, apart from the usual religious services. And if you aren't going to get community-building out of the religious services themselves, then you might as well build community outside the church entirely.
Not saying that all religious/church communities are all the same; my girlfriend in high school was much more involved with her church community (different religion). But her experience seemed to be more of an outlier than the norm.