I found the following in the journals of Lucy Maud Montgomery, a nice statement of the personal reasons why someone would bother going to church regularly. This is the entry dated August 23, 1901:

I sometimes ask myself why, after all, I go to church so regularly. Well, I go for a jumble of reasons, some of which are very good, and others very flimsy and ashamed of themselves. It’s the respectable thing to do — this is one of the flimsy ones — and I would be branded a black sheep if I didn’t go. Then, in this quiet uneventful land, church is really a social function and the only regular one we have. We get out, see our friends and are seen of them, and air our best clothes which otherwise would be left for the most part to the tender mercies of moth and rust.

Oh, you miserable reasons! Now for a few better ones!

I go to church because I think it well to shut the world out from my soul now and then and look my spiritual self squarely in the face. I go because I think it well to search for truth everywhere, even if we never find it in its entirety; and finally I go because all the associations of the church and service make for good and bring the best that is in me to the surface — the memories of old days, old friends, childish aspirations for the beautiful and sacred. All these come back, like the dew of some spiritual benediction — and so I go to church. [The Selected Journals of L. M. Montgomery: Volume I: 1889-191, ed. Mary Rubio and Elizabeth Waterston (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 262]