By Lisa Butterworth | Special to the Courier

Pastor Jacob Buchholz has had a busy morning; it’s the first day of Claremont United Church of Christ‘s Vacation Bible School. The week’s theme is “Oceans of Love,” so he and Jen Strickland, his wife and co-pastor, dressed up as the admiral and captain of a ship, and did a skit to welcome the kids before sending them off on their day of adventure.

It’s a far cry, and approximately 6,000 miles, from where Buchholz was earlier this year, in Puerto Iguazú, Argentina, filming a reality competition show called “The Snake,” which debuted June 10 on Fox. The show’s tagline: “Befriend. Betray. Or be gone.”

“This is social survival of the fittest. With 15 master manipulators facing off against each other, what could possibly go wrong?” says host Jim Jeffries, introducing the first episode, just before all 15 contestants pop out of life-size shipping crates.

“All of the competitors knew nothing about the show going into it,” Buchholz said, sitting in his office at CUCC. “The premise, as it was pitched to me: ‘This is going to be a show where we’re getting people from different professions that use persuasion.’” Those professions include a detective, a poker player, a nonprofit director, an OnlyFans creator, and, of course, a pastor. “We popped out of these crates and learned the concept of the game: that it’s going to take deceit, it’s going to take building pacts, it’s going to take manipulation. And for me, that’s kind of a really dirty word, especially within a religious context.”

Claremont United Church of Christ co-pastor Jacob Buchholz is a contestant on reality show “The Snake,” airing Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on Fox and is streaming on Hulu. Graphic/courtesy of Fox Studios

Exiting that crate was the climax of a process Buchholz began “just for the fun of it.” Last year, he came across an ad for a pilot test of a new reality show looking for a pastor. He applied and was contacted by a casting company eight months later. After multiple interviews, when the prospect of being cast became more likely, Buchholz began to weigh the realities. “The idea of leaving the church and my wife and my daughter for an extended period of time seemed impossible,” said Buchholz, who has a 3-year-old. “That’s when I started to think, is this really something that I could do?”

But the benefits, he believed, outweighed the costs. “There are a lot of pastors out there who I don’t see eye to eye with theologically and philosophically. If they’re going to put a pastor on national television, I personally don’t want it to be a pastor who might be anti-gay or anti-immigrant,” Buchholz said. “I’d rather share a more inclusive version of Christianity with the world, [to show] that there are people of faith who are trying not to be judgmental or hypocritical or hateful. So I thought, ‘This seems like a really important opportunity.’”

Buchholz’s ministry is one of utter inclusion. In a post on his Instagram account, @the.inclusive.pastor, he self-identifies as a “fight the patriarchy, march in pride parades, confront racism, respect indigenous communities, support reproductive rights, care for the planet, believe women, welcome the refugee and immigrant, transgender ally” kind of pastor.

So, how does he fare in a competition where most of the contestants are scheming, lying, and deceiving? By playing as honestly as he can, forging authentic connections, and exemplifying his worldview on national TV. In one episode, he defends the OnlyFans creator against a fellow contestant’s disparaging remarks. In another, he wears a shirt that reads “Black Lives Matter. Love is love. No human is illegal.” But the experience wasn’t easy.

“We were really isolated. The whole environment’s really emotional, and I shed a lot of tears. Mostly because I missed my daughter and my wife,” Buchholz said. “And I’m thinking to myself, ‘Why am I hanging out with 14 other master manipulators 24 hours-a-day when I could be with my family and my church?’ That part was tough.”

The competition itself was no picnic either. In each episode, contestants compete in squirm-inducing challenges, not for the faint of heart, including solving a puzzle with hundreds of cockroaches crawling around your head. The winner of the challenge is named “The Snake,” and given immunity in the “saving ceremony.” The Snake picks one contestant they want to remain on the show; that contestant saves another and so on, until there are two contestants left. The episode’s “snake” decides which one will go home. The third episode aired on Tuesday, and Pastor Jacob is still in the game.

His continued participation is especially poignant, since he revealed in episode two that if he wins the $100,000 prize, it will finance his and his wife’s in vitro fertilization journey. “It’s been the focus of our lives for a decade, trying to build our family,” he said. “[IVF] is an expensive endeavor, but really important to us. I just love being a parent. I love being a dad.”

Buchholz didn’t know the show was called “The Snake” until the first day of filming, but the biblical allusion is hard to deny. (Especially when giant billboards in New York City’s Times Square and on Sunset Boulevard in LA put Buchholz, wearing his clerical collar, front and center, a larger-than-life snake winding around the group of contestants). But Buchholz says not all serpent references in the good book are bad. “There is this really obscure passage in Numbers where the Israelites are being bitten by poisonous snakes, and Moses is instructed to cast a bronze serpent and hold it up, and anyone who looks up at the serpent will be saved. That’s used as a metaphor later for Jesus being lifted up on the cross. So the snake in that instance is a healing one,” Buchholz explains. “And then there’s an instruction that Jesus gives his disciples, ‘Be as innocent as doves, but as wise as serpents.’ I feel like that was my guiding mantra, trying to get through the competition.”

The CUCC congregation has been incredibly supportive, Buchholz said, hosting watch parties every Tuesday night at Baldy Brewing in Upland. And though he can’t disclose what happens on “The Snake” after the events of episode three, all in all, Bucholz said the experience was worth it, especially since he’s looking beyond the show’s finale.

“I hope that my being on this show is not encapsulated in this one moment. That when the show ends, it is an avenue to continue the conversation about how to bring healing and love and inclusion into the world,” Buchholz said. “So I’m having fun watching ‘The Snake,’ but I’ve got bigger goals and aims, and that’s really important to me.”

“The Snake” airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on FOX and streams on Hulu.