What happens when a good friend secretly submits your name to a reality television show that wants a religious worker to pretend to be a used car salesman in Las Vegas? Just ask Clark Bridge.

“She’s still my friend,” said Mr. Bridge, youth missioner at Christ Church, Gardiner, Maine. Last fall, shortly after learning that his friend submitted his bio and photo to TLC-TV, which is available to cable subscribers, for a reality program titled “Faking It,” Mr. Bridge was contacted by the show’s producers. The vestry of Christ Church and its rector, the Rev. Jack Fles, quickly lent their support, and soon after, a camera crew came to Maine to film a church service.

A few days later Mr. Bridge was on his way to Las Vegas to learn the car-selling trade for four weeks. At the end of his training, a panel of expert salesmen was asked to tell who, of a small group of salesmen, was “faking it.” The results were revealed when the program premiered on April 18.

Participating in the program gave Mr. Bridge a chance to experience a world and a lifestyle very different from the one he is used to in Maine. He worked on a raceway pit crew, drove a Ferrari, received a total makeover, and sampled the Las Vegas nightlife.

“I thought it would be impossible to lose all my prejudices and stereotypes about car salesmen and Las Vegas, but throughout my training and my time selling cars, I never felt the moral squeeze,” he said. “In the training there was a real focus on honesty. If you are caught lying to a customer, you’re done. What I felt more than anything was a need to depend on God and terrific closeness to God during those weeks. That part of the experience was really profound: a total dependence on God. I was alone in the desert.”

Mr. Bridge will not have the choice of watching his performance for the first time in private. Christ Church scheduled a viewing party to begin in the parish hall an hour and a half before the program start. “I know that I’m in a community of people who care about me so we’ll all watch it together,” he said.

Heidi Shott