South Philly Catholic church recruits digital services director

Most people don’t think of technology when they think of church, but St. Thomas Aquinas, a 125 year old Catholic church at 17th and Morris, is ready to enter the digital age.

And that first digital step starts with Thomas A. Shakely, the parish’s first Director of Digital Services. Shakely says he’s among the first people in the country to hold such a role with an individual Catholic church.

“It may possibly be the first of its kind in the country devoted exclusively to integrating the ‘physical’ and ‘digital’ aspects of ministry,” said Shakely, the 24-year-old dedicated to disrupting his corner of the faith world.

Updated: To clarify, Shakely is not a full-time employee but rather has bartered his services for office space and administrative support, he said.

Shakely is passionate about what he calls pastoral media — media services for churches and schools. He has written extensively about the need for the Catholic church to use digital technology to better connect its religious community on his personal blog and at the Huffington Post.

The position, says Shakely, began at the start of April as a pilot trial with him working on Monday each week.

Despite the limited hours, Shakely has big goals for the St. Thomas Aquinas, who says he’s focused on “creating a holistic approach to presenting St. Thomas Aquinas to the public.” In addition to religious services, the South Philly church has a PreK-12 school, a community center, gym, and auditorium.

“St. Thomas Aquinas seeks to serve ‘the immigrant and the stranger’ and its mission work flows out of its spiritual conviction. The work that’s done every day represents a very compelling story that’s unfolding in South Philadelphia,” Shakely said. “My job is learning how to unite these units and help them use new media and communications tools to share that story with the city.”

In case it’s not obvious what a Direct of Digital Services might to do to achieve that goal, here’s his short-term To Do list:

Being in uncharted parochial territory means Shakely, who recently moved from Manayunk to near the Aquinas parish, has a lot of digital inroads to make.

“Statistics suggest as many as 70 percent of self-identifying Catholics do not attend Mass regularly,” Shakely said. “If our retention rate is only 25-30 percent, we need to do more to engage those who love their Catholic identity but are struggling in practicing it in daily life.”

Though he’s young, Shakely has a strong social media background to work from.

Prior to taking on the challenge at St. Thomas Aquinas, Shakely started the Pastoral Media Letter, a subscription-based digital literacy service to train parishioners and church staff in community engagement strategies, which he still curates.

He says he plans to continue to push parishioners, church staff, and church members to strengthen the community through digital engagement.

“Using new media is a simple way to finally satisfy curiosities, and potentially cultivate stronger relationships and greater loyalty as a result,” Shakely said. “This is one example, and while it’s simple it’s also something practically no institution in the city has bothered to try.”

But religious communities are not the only groups he plans to reach out to. Shakely told Technically Philly that part of those inroads he’d like to make include creating partnerships with interested partners in the Philly tech community.

“We’ve got our eyes on North 3rd Street, at Indy Hall, and at all that’s unfolding just north of us,” Shakely said. “To start, we’re focused on getting our tech fundamentals to the point where they need to be internally, but I’m absolutely going to keep lines of communications open, and welcome any conversation over partnerships.”

Bringing digital savvy to St. Thomas Aquinas is the first step in building a stronger Philadelphia Catholic community, Shakely told Technically Philly.

“What I’m suggesting is actually very simple,” Shakely said. “It’s that Catholics can thrive if we seize the opportunities of new communications platforms, technologies, networks and tools to share our story.”