It is the church for the Hægebostad parish which is part of the Lister og Mandal prosti (deanery) in the Diocese of Agder og Telemark.

The white, wooden church was built in a octagonal design in 1844 using plans drawn up by the parish priest Nils Christian Hald with some help from the national architect Christian H. Grosch.

It sat in a similar position to the location of the present-day church.

[4] Together with more than 300 other parish churches across Norway, it was a polling station for elections to the 1814 Norwegian Constituent Assembly which wrote the Constitution of Norway.

Each church parish was a constituency that elected people called "electors" who later met together in each county to elect the representatives for the assembly that was to meet in Eidsvoll later that year.