It is one of the churches in the Lebesby parish which is part of the Hammerfest prosti (deanery) in the Diocese of Nord-Hålogaland.

[5] 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.

[5][6] On 4 November 1944, the old church was burned to the ground by the retreating German army near the end of the Occupation of Norway by Nazi Germany.

The funding for the church was from the Kingdom of Denmark which gave it as a gift to help with the rebuilding after World War II.