globally change all instances of a style in Pages

the answers I find online haven't worked in this instance. Probably because of my faulty workflow.

If that's the case, maybe someone here can suggest a different, more efficient workflow?

I import a pages document into a pages template document by using copy/paste

I'm doing this with a LOT of documents and thought if I work this way, I'd have all the styles as I prefer them.

But no.

The old Pages docs have a style defined as "questions"

the old version of the questions style is a cambria italic

I've changed that in the template to an avenir medium

So, using this protocol I have to go through the whole document, which RECOGNIZES the style (but knows it isn't correct and offers to update it to the old/bad style) (the style has an asterisk next to it) so in every instance,I have to open the style list and select the new version of that style and fix each individual instance.

Stupid, right.

I have 18 documents I have to modify. (and several different modified styles, not just this one)

Is my only alternative to change the style in each of the 18 documents?

Because it's more than just a font change—there are a LOT of modifications.

I'm attaching to images. In the first the question is "How did you manage that?" It's just been changed to the correct new "question" style.

In the second image the highlighted question is "Where did you live?" A look at the styles column shows that Pages knows it's a question, but the asterisk suggests that it's wrong. So I either update (which I don't want to do) or I open the style list and select the question style and impose the new version of the question style.

And I have to do this with every single question in every document.

Is there another workflow for this?