Reporting the Past

I read today that "Russia's President Vladimir Putin has begun his address to the nation. He begins by saying this speech is a "look to the future". The first time that I delivered a Pastoral Report to a Church Meeting, I was chided for "looking to the future". A report is a report, I was told, which reports things which have already happened, not things to come. Being suitably chastened, I made sure after that that I did enough reporting on the past. Yet it is vital to communicate, somewhere, in a Church Meeting, what the Church is on about and what it aspires to.