Adams was born in Washington County, Iowa, one of five sons of John Williams and Mary N. Hare Adams. Like his four brothers, he followed in the footsteps of his father, becoming a minister, following completion of the ministerial program at Union College in 1897. He initially worked with his father in Iowa and then traveled with him to California in 1901.

Adams married Abbie Dail, a former student at Healdsburg College, in 1903. Both were musicians and used their talents in evangelism in Fullerton and Ontario, California, until after his ordination in 1905, when they were invited to go to British Columbia, Canada. He worked there as secretary and treasurer as well as missionary secretary of the conference.

Five years later, he and his wife began teaching at the AIA, now in its second year at a new location and offering grades eleven and twelve for the first time. They were hired to create a music program, which they did in the next seven years as the school grew from 63 to 223 students. They brought with them a piano, the first at the school, on which she gave lessons in hymn playing for 50c each. She also gave lessons on a reed organ.

In 1917, they returned to California, where he taught Bible at San Fernando Academy for the next six years. When they closed the school in 1923 to avoid competition with the newly started La Sierra Academy, now La Sierra University, he resumed doing pastoral and evangelistic work in central California. Following his retirement in 1942, he and his wife moved to Pacific Grove, where they continued to work occasionally in evangelism until 1946. He was residing there when he died at age 82.

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Obituary, R&H, 26 April 1956; father's (J. W.) obituary, R&H,29 January 1942; news notes in other issues of that magazine and the Pacific Union Recorder, dating from 1907 to 1956; Faculty listing in and information from Changing Lives, The Hilltop Experience, Canadian University College centennial history, Edith Fitch and Denise Dick Herr, 2007.