Warning: Contains alcohol.
"If your pastor says it's okay to drink, find a new church"?
It works both ways.
"If your pastor says it's not okay to drink, find a new church"?
In fact, Jesus was slandered as a "glutton and a winebibber" because he partied so much. He fasted and spent time in solitude, but he also ate regularly with politically incorrect party people.
He made wine out of water. Not grape juice, as some like to say, but wine so good, it impressed the party planner.
Noah got drunk on wine.
Proverbs is always telling you not to get drunk on wine. (While telling you to "eat, drink and be merry," at the same time.)
So, yea, "wine" in the Bible is wine. Not cabernet sauvignon, but definitely wine that's intoxicating in sufficient volume. Not grape juice.
Jesus made it, Jesus drank it. He didn't get drunk, tho'.
To get drunk is one kind of wrong.
To eschew alcohol out of fear is another kind of wrong.
To try and drink as much as you can without getting drunk is yet another kind of wrong.
See, extremism of conservatism or liberalism is easy and lazy. The hardest thing is to live life for real, in the tension of paradox. But that's the only way to live, really. Living comfortably ensconced in either extreme isn't really living at all.