The first church at Sal was a small, tower-less sandstone building with a straight east end, thought to date from the twelfth century, though earlier accounts suggest a modest medieval structure with only a single narrow window and door on its south side. By the 1740s the entrance had been moved to the west end and a porch added. Further renovation followed in 1773, with a new altarpiece and painted decoration. Structural problems appeared later: cracks in the walls were reinforced with iron rods in 1789, and by 1870 the north wall needed propping with timber beams. Concerns over safety led the congregation to abandon the old building in March 1871.
After lengthy discussions, a new church incorporating substantial parts of the old one was built and consecrated in 1881. It has a slate roof and a copper-clad spire in neo-Gothic style, while the large brick-arched windows and the rose window on the tower's west side reflect a Romanesque influence. A thorough restoration took place around 1952, when a sacristy was added on the north side, a former screen wall behind the altar was removed, and the chancel window was blocked; since the church has no altarpiece, a cross that had hung on the old screen was placed in the resulting niche.
The pulpit, considered the finest piece of furnishing, survives from the earlier church and is generally dated to the seventeenth century; it was restored to its original appearance during the 1952 works. Fragments of a triumphal crucifix hang above the sacristy door. A carved oak figure of a seated Madonna, dated to the late fourteenth century, is also among the church's notable medieval survivals.
Other items of interest include a wooden torso of Christ, a communion chalice made by a Gothenburg goldsmith in 1658, and a Bible dated 1618. A female saint's figure once kept here has been deposited with the Västergötland Museum in Skara. Two bells hang in the tower, one cast in Gothenburg in 1741, the other donated in 1937 and cast in Ystad; both carry inscriptions in Latin and Swedish. The organ was built in 1913 by a firm from Lidköping and renovated in 1973.
Outside the churchyard's south wall stands a runestone, known locally as the Sal Stone, discovered broken in the old church foundations in 1881 and since repaired. Two eighteenth-century gravestones and a limestone sundial dated 1665 can also be found in the churchyard.