The present stone church was originally built between 1440 and 1450, replacing earlier wooden predecessors. It was known for a long time as Aringsås kyrka, after the old parish name of Aringsås, before becoming Alvesta kyrka.
Around 1600 the nave was given decorative Renaissance-style limewash paintings, both inside and out, and traces of an acanthus border survive beneath the eaves on the exterior. The chancel ceiling was later painted by Johan Christian Zschotzscher of Växjö, who for four years was the teacher of the noted painter Pehr Hörberg. A porch was added in the 1740s, the chancel was extended in 1746, and a sacristy followed in 1792, with further ceiling paintings added to the chancel during the eighteenth century. The church was most recently renovated in 2013–2014.
Inside, the well-preserved Renaissance-style pew screens and doors are considered of considerable cultural-historical interest, and beneath the chancel lies a burial vault of the Koskull family. Furnishings of note include a fourteenth-century communion chalice with its foot, a seventeenth-century paten and other altar vessels, and a Baroque pulpit of 1747 attributed to the diocesan carver Sven Segervall of Växjö. The altarpiece, depicting the institution of the Eucharist, was acquired in 1755 from Lorens Gottman and later restored in 1856 by Bengt Nordenberg.
The church has no tower of its own; instead a separate Baroque-style bell tower stands outside, housing three bells, one reportedly cast in 1555 and said to remain usable following renovation in 2015. By the churchyard wall stands a runestone, catalogued as Smålands runinskrifter 1, a reminder of much older activity on this site.
The church's organ history is notable if intricate: an early pipe organ by Johan Niclas Cahman was later followed by a gallery organ built in 1778 by Pehr Schiörlin of Linköping, its case designed with input from the architect Olof Tempelman. This historic organ case survives, various interventions and reconstructions having taken place during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and a further mechanical organ was installed behind it in 1975.