Leaving church life behind is very hard indeed. For me most of my social circles were built around church. Home group, Sunday services, university CU. It took a long time to get into new ways of meeting people socially and I'm still certainly not as close to as many people as in my church days.
I have no real advice to pass on here, just saying you're certainly not alone in finding it tough to leave that side of life behind.
You can cut a tree down and then cut that same tree up