Alan G. Cairns (August 12, 1940 – November 5, 2020) was a Northern Irish pastor, author, and radio Bible teacher.
A native of Belfast, Northern Ireland, he joined the nascent Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster as a teenager. After being called to its ministry, he became a close associate of Ulster preacher-politician Ian Paisley.[1] Cairns served as pastor of Free Presbyterian churches in Dunmurry and then Ballymoney. In 1973 he began a radio ministry, "Let the Bible Speak," which in 2020 was heard on stations in the UK, the Irish Republic, North America, India, Africa, Nepal, Iran and Afghanistan.[2][3]
In 1980, Cairns accepted a call to pastor Faith Free Presbyterian Church, Greenville, South Carolina, the first church in the United States to associate itself with the Ulster denomination.[4] In Greenville, Cairns founded Geneva Reformed Seminary, which today serves as the seminary for the Free Presbyterian Church of North America.[5]
Cairns adapted and published many of his sermon series as books and wrote a Dictionary of Theological Terms from a Reformed perspective. In 2007, Cairns became pastor emeritus, and in 2009, he retired to Ballymoney, where he died of COVID-19 in November 2020, at age 80.[6]