What would you do if you were 41 years old and about to lose everything – finances, reputation, home and even your family?

That was Singaporean Richard Tan.

Hardened by a life of drinking, smoking and womanising, Richard found himself desperate and alone on his balcony one day, cigarette in hand.

“At the time, I was smoking 40 cigarettes a day. I had boxes of cigarettes in every drawer of the house,” he told Salt&Light. 

As he faced the grim reality that his world was falling apart, he heard it.

A voice that said: “FINAL CALL.”

He was not a Christian then. But something made him stub out his cigarette. 

This was in 2002 and that was the last cigarette Richard ever smoked.

Final call

That day, Richard and his wife, Cathy, had had “a very heated argument”. “We were close to separation,” Richard admitted.

Their medical disposables business was also failing and they were close to bankruptcy.

A lot was at stake before Richard and Cathy became Christians, including the future of their young family.

When he stubbed out his cigarette, he found his steps leading him to his children’s school nearby. He knew there was a Christian fellowship going on, and he slipped into the school church. As he sat among the worshippers, a peace came over him.

Unknown to him, Cathy had trailed him to church. When he spotted her, he said: “Why are you here?”

She replied: “I was afraid you were going to kill yourself.”

It would be a watershed moment for the two.

They were enveloped by the Christian community who received them, shared the Gospel and invited them to couples’ fellowship.

“Richard became a different person,” said Cathy. “He changed for the sake of our relationship, the business, the children. When I saw the changes in him, I also wanted to worship the Lord.

“As we studied the Bible and grew closer to God and His people, we understood how much we needed a Saviour and we surrendered our lives.”

Then came the redemption of their life’s work.

“When God took away our old business, He gave us a new, better business,” said Richard.

The Christian friends who fellowshipped and journeyed with Richard and Cathy in their early days as believers.

Where once Richard and Cathy were on the brink of separation, Christ redeemed and restored their relationship to the point that, today, Richard calls Cathy “God’s greatest gift” to him.

Spanish company Eurofragrance was looking for a distributor in Asia.

“We told them we had no experience in fragrance and flavours, but they said they would train us,” Richard recalled.

The Tans named their distributorship CRT Aroma Philippines, CRT standing for Christ our Redeemer we Trust. At its 26-year mark this year, CRT Aroma is a leading SME in the fragrance and flavours industry.

Constructing lives

In 2015, Richard once again heard clearly from the Lord.

This time, the Lord said: “I want you to build a five-storey building. And on the fifth floor, my glory will shine forth.”

“I didn’t understand any of this,” confessed Richard.

At the time their company was located in a narrow two-storey building. After some furious negotiation, the owner of the land next to them agreed to sell them his land for the five-storey building.

It was to be no ordinary building.

At the building that God built, work takes place on levels 1 to 4, while the 5th floor is set apart exclusively for worship and Word.

“We didn’t have the money, or plan, or skilled manpower. So this became a building God built,” said Richard.

When he mentioned the building to the president of a Christian NGO, she was excited.

“‘In our NGO we have a kaibigan (Tagalog for ‘friend’) ministry, and there are some construction workers in the ministry,’ she told us.

“Three weeks later, she returned and said, ‘Brother Richard, Sister Cathy, I need to be honest with you. This group of construction workers which I told you about? The only thing they have ever constructed is a toilet.’

“The reason they have only built a toilet is because nobody trusted them. They were all ex-criminals and ex-drug addicts. Any crime you can think of, they have committed. They were basically rejects of society whom the NGO was trying to rehabilitate. Nobody wanted their services. 


“When I heard about this, I told God, ‘You are toying with us! We have no money, no plan, at least bring us people who are competent enough to finish the project. Lord, You are telling us not to finish the project!’” 


To add to their concern, their architect proposed a building that was not made of bricks and mortar but a steel superstructure to withstand earthquakes. When the architect heard of the unskilled labourers, he gave an ultimatum: Replace your labourers, or we walk.

Richard and Cathy kept the workers. And the architect walked. They were left with no experienced architects or engineers.

But they would discover that God did not just want them to construct a building. He wanted them to construct lives.

Five storeys of miracles

The two-year construction process was marked by miracles.

Whenever the builders encountered a problem, they would pray. And a solution would be found. There was not a single injury during the two years.

God even gave Richard a dedication date: October 18th, 2017.

“On October 17th, nothing was working – the lift was not working, the lights were not working, the electricity was not working. We said, Okay, no choice lah, the guests will have to take the stairs, and we’ll try to find some portable lights. After all, it was God who said October 18th, not Richard or Cathy.

“On October 18th everything worked. And the blessing went beautifully. On October 19th everything shut down again!

“You see skyscrapers – they are no big deal. The big deal is when you see God’s own building.”

God’s miraculous provision would reveal itself again and again.

The couple took out a hefty 80% bank loan. To their astonishment, clients would come in carrying cash in millions of Philippine pesos to buy their stock, steadily building up the company’s cash flow.

“Months after we started construction, our chief financial officer, May, asked me, ‘Sir, the bank is asking when you would like them to release their loan?’ I said, ‘Haven’t they already released the loan? Otherwise how did we pay all the initial construction expenses?’ She said, ‘Apparently we have enough funds!’

“The agreement was for the loan to be repaid over an 11-year period. We repaid it after just five years. And this was in 2022 when our business was down because of COVID.  

“God was the Provider from beginning to end.”

The Sucat Boys

Initially nobody would hire the inexperienced and rough construction workers. But when the CRT Aroma building was successfully completed in the Sucat area, word went around, and they became known as The Sucat Boys.

“New clients came saying, ‘Can we have The Sucat Boys construct our building?’” said Richard with a proud grin.

What nobody saw was how the Tans ministered to The Sucat Boys – aged between 20s and 40s – during the two years.

While the boys attended regular Bible study and weekly worship sessions organised by Cathy, they remained rough around the edges.

When Cathy heard of a fight breaking out in the dorm, her frustration boiled over and she marched in, shouting: “Why are you still fighting? I thought you said you believe in Jesus and you have changed. If you still want to fight, we don’t need you here. You can go!’” 

In the silence that followed, Cathy became aware that these 80 rough-and-tumble men who were staring at her had committed every crime imaginable. 

“I realised that I could be killed and there would be no witnesses,” she said. Slowly she started backing away towards the door. But something compelled her to stay. And instead of running away, she suddenly said: “Do you want to pray with me?”

To her surprise, the boys replied “Yes” in Tagalog “in very loud voices”.

It was the breakthrough they needed.

“From then on, there were no issues of fighting,” said Cathy. “We taught them manners, we taught them how to prioritise each other. During mealtimes, they learnt not to rush but to queue up nicely and serve each other.”

Bit by bit, through persistent days of Bible study, prayers and worship singing, the boys began to respect and care for one another.

“They saw the compelling love of the Lord,” said Richard.

He added: “If you ask us today, ‘Would you build another 5-storey building?’ We’d say, ‘No!’

“But we saw that when God calls, He equips. When He calls, He provides. By faith, we just need to obey.”

Holy ground

To the Tans, caring for their flock means going so far as to pay 30% above minimum wage to ensure that their staff have livable wages.

“In the Philippines you cannot survive on minimum wage. If you pay somebody minimum wage, you are actually putting the worker in perpetual poverty,” said Richard. “Before they can even receive their salary, they have to go to the loan shark to borrow money.

“But we want them to be able to send their children to school without being in debt. All our staff own their own homes. In the Philippines, when you pay minimum wage, the workers will not be able to own their own homes up to the day they die.

“As Christian employers, instead of telling them to go to church, we try to bring the church into the workplace. Every Wednesday morning, the office is closed because the time is dedicated for worship and Word.

“Someone asked me, ‘Brother Richard, did it occur to you how much it costs the company to stop operations for half a day?’ I said, ‘I didn’t calculate it. But I know how much it will cost me if I don’t. Because all those souls will be upon our head if we don’t.’

“As a Christian employer, you are not just their employer. You are their pastor, their missionary, their minister.”

Caring for their flock has meant counselling couples and even paying for their honeymoon – “getting married is expensive”!

Visitors to the building have said that they discern the presence of the Holy Spirit.

“Once a missionary went up to the fifth floor, and when she came out of the lift, she removed her shoes. I said, ‘Why did you take off your shoes?’ She said, ‘This is holy ground.’”

Work is worship

With Business as Missions guiding their ethos, Richard, now 63, and Cathy, 52, make sure they run CRT Aroma Biblically, Authentically and Missionally (BAM).

“My take as a businessperson used to be: Church is church, business is business. But after we saw the miracle of our building and The Sucat Boys, we understood – our work is our worship, our business is our worship.”

That is not to say the going is easy.

Family ties shine in their company, CRT Aroma Philippines, with daughter Rachel, 31, as CEO, and son Charles, 30, as Head of Business Development, alongside Richard and Cathy, who are the General Manager and Assistant General Manager.

“When we call ourselves ‘authentic’, it means everything we do has to be honouring to God and people.”

A little over a year ago, the company had an issue with the Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) despite having immaculate accounting practices. With the BIR asking for a settlement in order not to bring the case to the Supreme Court, the Tans’ lawyers advised them to settle.

A BAM Philippine event with Christian business owners.

“The settlement amount was much lower than the fee BIR was asking,” said Richard. “We could have compromised and settled. But once I compromise, I have no more moral right to talk about business as missions to Christian business owners. I have no moral right to talk about Jesus in front of my people.”

He instructed his lawyers not to settle. And in a plot twist, the case was dismissed.

Mindset of stewardship

Does he ever get taken advantage of? 

He chuckles. “Let’s say you have 10 employees; five of them take advantage of you. But five of them need to hear God’s message. If you are afraid and stop yourself from speaking the Word of God, the Lord will hold you accountable for the souls of these five.”

While Richard and Cathy are the founders and primary movers of BAM Philippines, their daughter Rachel is an ambassador/host, while their son Charles manages events as well as technical support.

He added: “But I tell you want happens when we travel. My daughter is the CEO, my son recently came back to head the business development unit. Even when we travel together, do I call back the office every day? No. Once when I come back, one of the sales staff told me, ‘Oh sales has increased. You can go on vacation again!’

“After hearing the Word of God, they know that I’m not their boss. There is a bigger Boss looking over them.”

Richard and Cathy, who founded Business as Mission Philippines, have travelled to New Zealand, Australia and across Asia to share how their business – God’s business – has ministered to so many, from the builders to the NGO to Christian business owners, and even to themselves.

“The Lord started with us – humbling us and constructing our lives first,” said Cathy. “We know what it’s like to be broken and redeemed and restored. And we want everyone to know the love of the Lord.”

Richard added: “When God gave me that final call, it was just the beginning of a journey that revealed His awesome power. As long as God gives me breath, I will tell His story because His glory cannot be denied.” 

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