It is an active Anglican church in the deanery of Preston, the archdeaconry of Lancaster and the diocese of Blackburn.

[2] St John's stands on an ancient Christian site, originally dedicated to Saint Wilfrid.

The church is not specifically mentioned in the Domesday Book, the earliest documentary reference being in 1094, when it was part of a grant by Roger de Poiteau to the abbey at Sées.

Along the sides of the aisles are buttresses rising to gablets, and each bay contains a large three-light window.

On the north side of the chancel is a three-light window, and a parapet with open zig-zag work.

The vestry has a west door, a three-light east window and coupled lancets on its side.

On the west wall of the church is a large painting of the Sermon on the Mount executed in 1956 by Hans Feibusch.

The church includes a notable stained-glass artwork by Brian Clarke, a memorial window commissioned by the Preston Guild to commemorate its 1972 Guild Year and as a tribute to Alderman Fred Gray, was designed 1973–74 and installed in the latter part of 1974.

The three-light window is notable for featuring one of the earliest uses of silkscreen-printing onto mouth-blown glass, and possibly its first expression in the United Kingdom,[11] incorporating photographic passages including a street scene from the 1972 Preston Guild processions.

[6] Elsewhere there are memorials to members of the Hoghton family, and in the tower is the tomb-recess of Thomas Starkie Shuttleworth who died in 1819.

[2] There is also a wall monument by J. Theakston to Revd Roger Carus Wilson, who died in 1839, carved with reliefs of the five Preston churches built during his incumbency.

[13] In 1889 it was rebuilt by William Hill and Son and moved from its position in the west gallery to the north of the chancel.

[17] The original ring of six bells, cast by Thomas Mears II in 1814 and Mears & Stainbank in 1934, were removed from the tower and later installed at Southminster Presbyterian Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States, where they now form a ring of eight.