According to tradition, which has historical roots, a wooden church in honor of the holy apostle and evangelist John the Theologian was built in 1552 on the site of the camp of Tsar Ivan the Terrible's army during his third campaign against Kazan. In 1678, a new stone temple was constructed on the site of the wooden church. This was the third stone church in the Arzamas district after the Spaso-Transfiguration Cathedral of the Spassky Monastery, built in 1638, and the Church of John the Theologian near Spasskoye Swamp. The temple served parishioners from two villages, Ivanovka and Berezovka.

In the early years of Soviet power, services continued in the church. However, in February 1935, by the decision of the presidium of the Gorky Regional Executive Committee, the ringing of bells was stopped in the village. In the summer of the same year, the warm chapel of the church was repurposed as a collective farm warehouse, and on April 28, 1941, a meeting of collective farmers decided to close the church. By order of the district authorities, the bells were sold for scrap metal, and the church building was used as a grain storage facility and collective farm office.

Since the mid-1970s, after Ivanovka was annexed to Arzamas, the church remained empty.

In 2003, the temple was returned to the Nizhny Novgorod Diocese, and in the same year, services resumed there.