Following graduation from Ozark Academy in Arkansas, Jones attended Southwestern Junior College, now Southwestern Adventist University, and Union College, where he was a biology major. He subsequently completed a B.A. in education at Oklahoma City University, pursued graduate study at California State University in Northridge, and completed a Ph.D. in church administration at the California Graduate School of Theology in Glendale, California. Jones was in the U.S. Navy from 1946 to 1948.

His first involvement with music happened when he was asked to direct music for the Montana Conference camp meeting in 1958. With the encouragement and assistance of his wife, Ruth (Bergstrom), a talented musician he had married in 1948, he successfully met the challenge, which led to an invitation to work as a singing evangelist in Arizona. He worked as music coordinator for evangelist Robert Whitsett for meetings in Arizona and Salt Lake City, Utah, and then assisted George Vandeman with an evangelistic series in Phoenix, Arizona, and William A. Fagal in one in Los Angeles.

In his years of pastoral work in Montana, Arizona, and California, Jones often sang at the beginning or end of his sermons, a practice he still continues in retirement when he occasionally preaches at Adventist churches in the Southern California Conference. He holds the longevity record for service at the Lancaster church in that conference, where he was pastor for eighteen years, from 1974 to 1992, when he retired. Jones continues to serve as chaplain for Thousand Trails in Soledad Sands, one in a network of private system of RV camping and outdoor preserves in the U.S., a position he has held for 29 years, preaching and singing in Sunday services.

In 1999, the Joneses were honored for their service when at the dedication of new school facilities for the Antelope Valley Adventist School in Lancaster, California, the school’s Educational Foundation named the preschool, kindergarten, and grades one and two facility the Edmund and Ruth Jones Early Learning Center.

In 2007, the fellowship hall at the Lancaster Adventist Church was also named for them. The plaque on the front of the building reads, "The Jones Fellowship Hall. This building is dedicated to Dr. Edmund and Ruth Jones for their years of pastoral service to the Lancaster Adventist Church from 1974-1992."

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