'going to bars' doesn't have organisation and rarely has community, and it encourages problematic drug use which is just about the last thing people like this need. Hobby clubs are much harder to find than churches, and I'd say due to social norms they're generally not as willing to go into dealing with emotions as churches tend to be. Even if churches are too eager to manipulate you into feeling certain things about certain topics.

IMO, even a worker's union would have been a better example than yours, but it's obviously much more single-topic than a church - they don't usually get involved in marriages or burials, and they tend to be just as gender-segregated as the trades they represent.