He then worked as a lay minister at St Paul's Presbyterian Church on the Isle of Dogs and after two years of training there was accepted at Westminster College, Cambridge.
He was ordained in 1904 to the ministry of St Paul's Presbyterian Church, Enfield and married Annie Maria Hewitt on 3 August 1904.
He was awarded the degrees of Doctor of Divinity from London University, and published in 1909 a thesis titled "Modern Theories of Sin".
In 1919, his "Order of Divine Service for Public Worship", an ecumenical liturgy drawing on various Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Anglican sources, was published by the Oxford University Press.
Orchard continued as minister to King's Weigh House until early 1932, when his project of transforming this high-church Protestant congregation into an ecumenical "bridge church" was rejected after years of negotiations.