The present stone church was built between 1793 and 1795, replacing a wooden chapel at Gunneboda that dated from the late 1500s and had become too worn and cramped for the growing congregation. The choice of stone over timber may have been influenced by a royal decree of 1776 requiring new churches to be built of brick, marble, sandstone, soapstone or granite rather than wood. Building work was overseen by master builder Henrik Wermelin, to designs by Gustaf Pfeffer, and the church was consecrated on 17 May 1795 by the Bishop of Kalmar, Martin Georg Wallenstråle.
The building is a typical neoclassical hall church, with a spacious nave, a straight-ended chancel wall, a sacristy to the east, and a west tower originally topped with a lantern and cross-globe; the lantern was rebuilt in 1851 into its present enclosed form with a clock. Inside, the barrel-vaulted timber ceiling and tall round-arched windows are characteristic of the period.
The chancel is dominated by an altar-pulpit, a combined altarpiece-and-pulpit arrangement fashionable in the late 1700s and early 1800s but later disapproved of by Sweden's heritage authorities, leading many churches to relocate their pulpits elsewhere. Kristvalla's survived; the original altar-pulpit was altered in 1865 and again rebuilt in 1930 to its current appearance, incorporating older elements alongside newer work. Comparable surviving examples from the former Kalmar diocese are mainly found in churches on Öland.
Other notable furnishings include a communion rail with turned balusters dating from the church's construction, a Gothic-style font decorated with lily ornaments, and two stained-glass windows made in 1983–84 by Kjell Engman of Boda glassworks. The chancel also holds two icons by the Öland artist Sven-Bertil Svensson and a processional crucifix by Eva Spångberg. An older painting on the north chancel wall depicts the Crucifixion, flanked by the Virgin Mary and the apostle John.
Several fittings were brought over from the old wooden church, including carved putti playing trumpets and a gallery screen whose panels are decorated with images of the apostles and other symbols. The enclosed box pews are contemporary with the church's construction. The church also has an organ built in 1931 by A. Mårtensson's Orgelfabrik of Lund, replacing an earlier instrument from 1842.